English 110 Essay 1 - Personal Essay

Cover Page

Ms. Farina,

I began writing this memoir with the idea of recalling only the memory of my surgery.  It turned out that I thought deeply about the long wait outside the operating room before surgery.  A lot of memories entered my mind about the wait.  I remembered sitting there thinking about many of the things I’d enjoyed about my life.  I wanted to recreate this moment as best as possible. 

While recreating this moment in my life I discovered a few things about myself.  It was the first time I took death seriously, and it was the time I began to set goals for myself in my life.  I was also amazed to find that I had come to terms with myself and was ready to accept death.  Even though it was only surgery on my foot I was afraid something would happen that would cause me to die.  It seems amazing to me that I hadn’t really lived and I was already prepared to die.

Essay

What did I get myself into?  How could I let this happen?  My mind was going crazy as I sat in a wheelchair outside the surgery room in the cold hospital.  I was going to have surgery on my foot to create an arch since my foot was severely flat.  The hospital was so cold.  Especially in the waiting area wearing nothing more than that light piece of cloth.  The nurse took me down to there and left me there alone for more than 15 minutes.  While I was there many things went through my mind.  I really wondered if I would survive this whole ordeal. 

I sat there and looked around.  The walls had the typical medical posters and information.  The hallway smelled like any other hospital, with that strange clean smell.  I could hear voices from the various offices and hallways - none of the voices familiar and none comforting.  Occasionally a nurse or doctor would walk by and walk around my mass of wheelchair and tubes leading to the life support mechanisms on that long pole beside me as if it was normal for someone to be sitting there.

Every once in awhile a nurse would walk in our out of the large swinging doors in front of me that had the words “Operating Room” plastered across them.  When this happened I would get a peek of what was inside this mysterious room.  I had a feeling this was the room I would be soon entering, but no one would stop and confirm that for me.  All in all this experience of waiting was one of the most frightening experiences in my life.  At times I felt like just getting up out of the chair and sneaking away.  Maybe no one would notice I was gone.  They would have found me eventually though.  I would have only been prolonging the inevitable. 

That reminds me of when I used to go swimming at the lake with my friends.  I could go under the water and hold my breath for a long time and reappear somewhere else without leaving a trail.  My friends would chase me around and try to catch me.  Of course they always would catch me after they wore me out, but sometimes I could run from them for up to an hour without them even getting close. 

I haven’t been sailing for a long time.  I remember when my dad had a 21’ Catalina sailboat and we would go out sailing on the lake.  Every time we went out there never seemed to be a lot of wind.  One time we ran into a gust of wind that tipped the boat over 30 degrees.  That was so much fun.  My brother never liked it though.  He was afraid the boat would tip over and he would drown.  I knew it would never tip over because it was engineered not to, but my brother never believed that.  Of course it was always fun to go sailing in the small Sunfish.  That boat could tip over, but it needed a lot less wind to get it going.  You always had to be careful to turn into the wind though.  If you didn’t the sail could swing around very quickly and knock you out of the boat.  If the wind is strong enough it could even tip the boat over.

Sailing in Pennsylvania on my grandpa’s boat was probably the best sailing experience though.  We would always start out by driving out there from the suburbs of Pittsburgh where my grandparents lived.  It was maybe an hour or so drive.  We would then get there and uncover the boat and rig the sails.  I always enjoyed rigging the front end because I would have to get up on the front of the boat and stand up where I could possibly fall off.  Once when we were out on the water it was another calm day – not too much wind.  Since it was so calm everyone went down in the cabin and left me to run the boat.  All of a sudden there was a huge gust of wind.  I took control of the boat and used all the wind to my advantage.  I felt proud that I could handle the boat so well.  Then for lunch we would go to this small that had a place to dock the boat outside it.  They had mostly picnic types of food: hamburgers, hotdogs, french fries, not much variety.  We would get our food and eat it out on the wooden deck that overhung the lake. 

The only thing I didn’t like was the ants.  There were always ants crawling around the place.  The idea of ants and other bugs crawling over my food is never appealing to me.  I guess that’s why I’ve never really liked picnics that much.

One time when we were driving out to the lake there was a long traffic jam.  It drove me crazy that we’d have to wait longer to get to the lake.  It took an hour to get to the end of the traffic jam.  There we saw a car had lost control and hit a large cement pillar that holds up an overpass.  No one could have survived.  There wasn’t much of the car left.  I still think about that moment when I’m driving and I go under a bridge like that. 

It’s interesting how I started thinking about my surgery and ended up thinking about a medical event in the end.  If I would have written some more I probably would have gotten back to the rest of the surgery story eventually.  Really I didn’t even get to the best part of that memory.  There’s some other stuff I’m not sure I remember correctly either.  I don’t remember if the doors actually said “Operating Room.”  I doubt they did since the doors actually opened into a hallway that contained a few operating rooms.  I did eventually go through the door though.  I don’t remember who actually wheeled me in though.  It could have been one of the doctors, but my mind seemed to prefer a nurse wheeling me in.

The memories of swimming easily appeared since I told them to a friend on the way home for Easter break.  I doubt I survived for an hour at any time.  A half hour is probably more accurate.  This memory probably keeps reappearing lately because I would like to be at the lake right now.  I really could use a long vacation and I’m really looking forward to summer.

When I was younger I really didn’t like sailing that much.  It was more of something I did to make my dad happy.  When I got older, after my dad had sold his sailboat, it became more enjoyable.  Of course I got to do it lot less since I didn’t get to spend much time with my grandparents in Pittsburgh.  Rigging the front sail was so much fun.  It was something I really liked because it was something my brother didn’t like to do since he was afraid of the boat to begin with and I didn’t have to share it with him.  Sometimes I would even stay up in the front of the boat while it was under sail.  At times it was a great experience.   That one time I took control of the boat when the gust hit it was probably the first time I really enjoyed sailing.  It was like a rush to be able to control the boat so well and know what to do on the spot.

I still remember where the small restaurant was located and where the docks for it were, but I don’t really remember what it looked like.  I think it was up on a hill and looked somewhat like a barn, but I could be totally wrong.  I do remember the wood picnic tables outside and all the annoying ants though.  If it wasn’t for the ants I probably wouldn’t have remembered it as well.

I remember the accident because it was the first bad traffic jam I was ever in and it was the first fatal accident I’d ever seen too.  It was hard to believe there were actually people in what was left of that car.  I’ve always tried to be careful driving since that memory always sticks in my mind as something I’d never want to happen to me.