Daddy's Little Girl (The Update)

   When I was younger, approximately three years ago, I wrote that essay for my seventh grade English class. Our topic was to chose someone who we thought had "Hero" status and met up to the abilities that an "Unsung Hero" would. Through the years, I have grown to understand the innocence in my text when exclaiming that my father, who was 47 at the time and living with Fabry's Disease, was such a man to look up to. Buried away in the files of my computer I left this message to the world; this protest of valuable life. A copy hung on a wall at my dad's doctors office where he and many others got their infusion of enzymes every other week. That essay was found and put in a newsletter for St. Peter's Children's Hospital, that essay was found and put onto a web site for the world to read about my dad, and that essay has brought me here, to once again cry out how one life can change so many.

    This man, my father, who is still living at the age of almost 50, though sought to pass away at the age of 40, is to this day my "Unsung Hero." He still cooks like he did (only maybe with a little more pizzazz), he still laughs like he did, he still looks at the world with a triumphant view that no matter how much pain or how much depression may bring him down, he will always prevail, and he still is alive.

     I have learned much more since my nieve days about Fabry's and its effects. I thought I knew everything about my father until they released the news to me that I, too, have Fabry's and though just a carrier still am symptomatic. I started undergoing tests and seeing doctors that I was unaware even existed. I started being questioned about my daily activities, seeing that I was 50 lbs overweight (now only 25), and if this hurt or that hurt or if I was feeling sad some days more than others. I found it quite humorous that after hardly a few weeks of these tests, a needle, which used to make me shut my eyes and squirm, was nothing more then a sharp object and no matter how hard I tried I knew it was going in my vein one way or another, so being scared of it or fighting it was not really an option. In the end, though, I discovered the most important thing about the change in my life; my outlook on my life shifted from a victim - "poor me and my life is so hard" - to taking charge and helping others, like my father.

    Everyday I thought he was just physically crippled to walk up flights of stairs or physically tired from sleeping all the time, but I was so wrong. It takes a mental and emotional toll on you when you are working everyday and supporting your family, to having to stay home and have your family support you. Never would I say he doesn't support us back, but the switch was so drastic I can see why he has so many dreams of the days he worked and everything was "normal". But here is my final statement- everything is as normal as you perceive it to be because life is about the journey and not the destination. My dad has recently taken interest into the depths of philosophy and, too, has discovered "The Secret" to living life to the fullest. This 'disease' may have changed his goal in life and changed his reality, it may have even slowed him down, but the real reason he is to this day my "Unsung Hero," is because he didn't need a book or movie to tell him how to live life, he was thrown a curve-ball and yet ended up right where he should be, alive and with his family.

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