The last race of my high school cross country career, I stood on the starting line with one hundred other girls and repeated only one thought; just finish. I didn’t think about winning. I didn’t think about beating any records or trying to beat anyone for that matter. I just wanted to finish. I wanted to look back and know that I did this one thing for me. I wanted to know that I did something that scared me, something that no one expected me to do, and something that I wasn’t even sure I could do. I wanted to power through this race and finish. So when the start gun rang out through the air, I took off running.
I sprinted the first stretch of the 5k race and my legs began to get the familiar ache I had grown accustomed to the last few weeks. The ache that said my legs weren’t getting any oxygen. I knew this was because my hematocrit, the oxygenated blood in my body, had gone down recently and it had been almost two weeks since my last blood transfusion. It was at about 19%, or half the usual amount for girls my age. I tried my best to ignore the ache and run my hardest, but I was slowly falling to the back of the pack. My lungs were begging for air and I realized at the end of the first mile that I was in dead last. It was right then that I knew, this would be the hardest race of my life.
It took me thirty-seven minutes to finish that race. The longest and most difficult thirty-seven minutes of my life. That race happened only weeks after my hematologist decided that after eight years of living through the aplastic anemia it was finally time for a bone marrow transplant. The disease had progressed to the point that my body was transfusion dependent and it was no longer safe for me to continue living with the condition. Though I knew the race would be exceedingly difficult because of my low blood counts, I wanted to compete because it was likely this would be the last sports competition I would participate in for my high school. It turned out I was right. Two months later my family and I got word that a donor had been found and that my bone marrow transplant and recovery would take place during the last six months of my senior year.
Oddly enough, though cross country was arguably the sport I was worst at in high school, it was that last race that I kept remembering during my transplant. Every time I was in pain, or I felt like I would never get out of the hospital, or I felt like I would never recover, I thought about that race. I thought about how it had taken every ounce of patience, courage, and confidence I possessed to make it through those thirty seven minutes, and how it was those same character traits that had helped me live through my disease for the last eight years.
Even when the disease made it hard for me to do sports, or too tired to do my school work, or too sick to continue living without a transplant, I was confident that whatever happened to me I could push through it and succeed. No matter what, I never let the disease scare me out of doing what I wanted to do.
That is why in my last cross country race, though by normal standards I failed miserably, I felt like I had won. I had won because with patience and courage I finished the last race of my high school career without letting the fear of my disease stop me.
Whenever I am having a hard time or I am discouraged, I look back to that last cross country race. I look back and think about how that race embodied everything I have learned and everything I have become since I was first diagnosed with my disease. Every time I think about that race, I am reminded that with patience, courage, and confidence I can get through anything.
