Personal Narrative: The Day My Life Turned Upside Down

To many, October sixth is just another day, but to me it is much more; it is the day my life was flipped upside down. As a kid, I was always extremely lively, bouncing off the walls everywhere I went. I never slept very much, but that never stopped me from being the epitome of energy. However, the summer before sophomore year things changed. I felt rundown everyday and no matter how much I slept, or attempted to at least, it was never enough. At the time, I was in the middle of my fourth cross country season. Every race and practice became harder and harder, until the point where I began dropping out of races after only a mile. My doctors and I thought it was just my asthma flaring up because of the changing seasons, but my intuition told me that it was much more. School began and I struggled to make it through the day. In my classes, I was unable to focus on what was going on. When the bell rang, walking to my next class felt like a marathon. One day while walking up the stairs from my spanish class to history, everything went black. Fortunately I had reached the top of the stairs and was right outside of my classroom. I grabbed the door to keep myself from falling and after a few minutes of …show more content…
However, an unexpected and long-lasting consequence has been losing my hair. Anemia causes the body to go into survival mode, meaning it eliminates anything that is not necessary: including hair. About one third of my hair fell out from my head, my eyelashes and eyebrows thinned, and even my arm hair became sparse. As a kid, my most distinguishing feature was my hair, and I loved it. It formed perfectly curled ringlets, always bouncing around. It matched my personality and made me feel special compared to the rest of my straight-haired family members. The anemia left me without enough hair to form neat ringlets and in their place left thin frizzy