Magazine/April, 2013 8
We talk for a bit and my mom was standing next to me and I looked at her and said, “So you know those rumors about me coming back, well they are true, I will be back this summer for school there next year. And then for a couple minutes there is just Emily pumping her hands up and down squealing at the top of her lungs, spinning in the spinning chair that she was sitting in by the computer. Her grandma was sitting on the couch behind her because they were visiting for the weekend, her grandma was laughing and I’m sure my face was in as wide of a grin as it could get, smiling at my best friend, who I would be reunited with soon. We talked for a couple hours more, smiling and laughing and making plans for the summer to come. It was going to be so much fun, hanging out with my best friend just having a good old time talking about what we wanted to do next year. Although we didn’t get to do all that we wanted to do that summer, we were together often, and when we were not we were emailing back and forth, getting ready for sophomore year, planning all the details of what we were going to be involved in and comparing classes. I will never forget that day because of how excited my best friend was that she was going to be reunited with me, and I was excited too, by the beginning of sophomore year, people were mixing us up and calling us by each others names, everybody knew that we were best friends and that we were inseparable.
My friends are everything to me, as well as my family, but there is way more to my story then just that. I was born with a missing X chromosome, which means that I have Turner Syndrome (TS) which makes me short which means I am stuck at the annoying height of 4'11", just one more inch and I could have been 5'! Turner Syndrome only effects girls, but boys have a similar chromosomal disorder. You would think that would have been all but where there is Turner Syndrome there is always even more issues. No girls with Turner Syndrome’s ovaries work, which means that I will never be able to have my own children. There are also issues with autoimmune diseases, heart problems, hearing issues, kidney issues and a whole bunch of other things that can be issues in each different girl who has Turner Syndrome. I found out about my Turner Syndrome this past summer, but I have known that I have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA), which is a autoimmune disease, since I was 14 months old. But this summer and fall, I added a couple more issues to the ever-growing list, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), hearing issues and hypothyroidism. All of these things are things that could happen to people with Turner Syndrome, so it is not surprising that they are happening to me. Having all these issues is difficult but I have learned to cope with it because it is just something that I have to deal with.