Statement of Hardship Forum

[mwhuzain]

All notes Appreciated. Hopefully I don't have to kill this one, too : )

My parents are sick. My mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was four and was forced to go on disability the next year. My father has Polycystic Kidney Disease requiring his second transplant and has to fight through pain and fatigue everyday at work. And as their ailments are as dissimilar as can be, so are their predispositions.
You see, my mom has her master’s degree and my dad never finished his home country’s equivalent of high school. And while this fact manifested itself positively early in my life—education was presented as a priority by both parents for contrasting reasons—it exacerbated my family’s financial troubles later on. After my father’s diagnosis in 2004, ten years after my mother’s, we didn’t know if we’d be able to make ends meet. I would later contribute my limited income as much as possible, but with my father’s output waning and an incredibly expensive transplant looming, it was barely enough.
And here is where I extract one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my short life. While my mom was able to secure financial consistency upon her diagnosis through her firm’s disability insurance, my father was afforded no such stability. He is a mechanic. He works with his hands and will live a shorter life because of it. My mom, though, made herself an asset and continues to be rewarded for it through keeping our household afloat.
Neither of them consciously chose their path. My mother came from a middle-class family from Michigan, and my dad a poor family of eight from Palestine. They both worked hard and ended up with some bad luck, in terms of health. It wasn’t their fault that they became sick. It was simply the cards dealt, and we all made do, in part with the help and kindness of others. I now know (know now???) that being among those people who helped and gave and cared is something I must pay forward every opportunity I have; because choice is sometimes not a factor in life.