Back Surgery by Kendal

Back Surgery by Kendal - February 2024 Scholarship Essay

Excruciating back pain as an 18 year old for nearly 12 months is not how most people my age would imagine their senior year of high school to be. Time. Being young. Physical therapy. Stretches. Steroid shots. None of it helped. Hair loss. Acne. Struggles with academic life and social life. Unable to participate in soccer and basketball. In 2020, the Covid-19 year, I was experiencing the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I presented the doctor with my symptoms as: back pain, hamstring inflammation, numbness in my right foot as well as an odd gait to my walk. After multiple tests being run, an MRI and X-rays, I was diagnosed with a herniated disc in L5-S1 discs. The doctor explained to me that this is very unlikely for women my age. After exhausting all avenues of faith and strength on my own, my weak and fragile body couldn’t take it anymore. The doctors decided it was time that I had to have surgery. Surgery as an 18 year old was the scariest situation to come upon. Losing so much of my senior year in high school was devastating. Due to constant pain the last thing on my mind was attending college. I just wanted to feel good. I wanted to be able to walk, sit, and sleep with no pain. Four months post surgery I was finally able to live a pain free life. I was grateful that even with all the pain I was able to maintain a 3.93 GPA and enter college and focus on my future.

Occupational therapy is a career that involves holistic treatments to help people become the best as well as the healthiest versions of themselves. In the future, I aspire to become an occupational therapist. As a future therapist I hope to help people with injuries, old age, and activities of daily living. I am currently volunteering at a nursing home. Greenleaf Health campus is a specific type of therapy that helps patients regain strength both mentally and physically. I love volunteering for a multitude of reasons but here are only a couple. Volunteering allows me to experience first hand how an OT’s day to day job is. This really secures my interest in occupational therapy by being in the nursing home for 100 hours this summer. Second, I am able to help patients gain better health. For example, when I am working in my future career I will assist patients who have had a stroke, who have fallen, who have dementia, and who have also just been wanting to do daily life skills like they used to. In college I will learn about the importance of self care within the geriatric field. To succeed in college my education needs to be superior. Maintaining a 3.71 GPA my freshman year and sophomore year of undergraduate as well as being a college athlete helped me manage my time. Within my educational goals I plan to maintain above a 3.5 GPA as well as keeping a letter grade above a letter B in all of my prerequisite classes. By earning this scholarship, I will be able to support myself within my undergraduate work of college as well as graduate school.