The Walk by Sarah

The Walk by Sarah - March 2014 Scholarship Essay

May 24, 2013 was the proudest day of my life. As a 17 year old woman, I simultaneously earned my high school diploma and received my associate degree when I walked at graduation. The most rewarding part of the day was that I actually walked.

For the past seven years of my life, walking has been an enormous challenge and a painful task that I dreaded each day. Since birth I have been affected by Charcot Marie Tooth disease, a progressive hereditary peripheral neuropathy. As I grew up, my feet twisted and deformed to where, by 2012, I could barely walk. After years of searching for possible solutions, January 2013 found me in an L.A. operating room, ready for my first in a series of surgeries to completely reconstruct my feet. Surgery is no stranger to me. As a child I underwent operations to reconstruct my ribcage, and my feet have now been operated on five times. However, my physical restraints have shaped me into a tenacious woman who enjoys learning what I can do rather than being controlled by what I cannot.

My interest in academics began in the 5th grade, right about the time that my feet began to give up on me. Instead of participating in recess each day, I would read and write about historical events and let my mind run where my feet could not. I am a very competitive person, and academics became my playing field. By the last semester of my high school senior year, I had my eyes locked on concurrently earning my associate degree and high school diploma.

The final semester started on January 14, and my first foot surgery began January 21. My life suddenly became overwhelming. Each surgery includes two weeks of complete immobilization and heavy painkillers, then eight more weeks without weight bearing, then a few more weeks in a walking cast, followed by several months of physical therapy. By the time I was in a walking cast from my first surgery, the surgery for my other foot was only days away. This was a tedious and arduous few months, but I fought to stay on track.

My final cast from my second surgery was removed three days before graduation, and I had to re-learn how to walk. It was painful, but I had spent the previous months dreaming about the possibility of walking on my own new feet to receive my degree. I was not about to give up with only three days to go.
Graduation day came, and I went up to the side of the stage in my wheelchair. When my name was called, I stood up, one foot in a shoe, one foot in a walking cast, and grabbed my mom's arm to walk across the stage. It was a slow walk with a great deal of pain, but I did it. I walked at graduation and received my degree. I actually walked. (See the clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0rKoJPD8NI )

I am now recovering from the second series of surgeries. My feet are completely reconstructed, and on November 19, 2013, I finally stood in two normal shoes and walked out of my surgeon's office with two new feet. The same tenacity that helped me push through these physical barriers is what fuels my desire to continue school and become a neurosurgeon. Until the day “Dr.” sits in front of my name, I will consider graduating high school with my associate degree my greatest academic achievement. This accomplishment is all the sweeter in my memories because of the obstacles I had to overcome in order to finally step across that stage, degree in hand, and I now know that there is no achievement that is too difficult or intimidating to reach. For the rest of my life, I will be able to look back on those long months that constituted the end of my senior year and know that I actually did it, and there is no reason why I should not be able to achieve whatever comes next.