By Fiona Goldman
Teacher: Barbara Wenger, Jefferson School
Award: Second Place, Fourth Grade Essay
Even if something bad happens to you, it doesn’t mean that you are defeated. My grandma had a liver transplant, and that doesn’t stop her from doing the things that she loves to do.
My grandma was in the hospital for over a month, and she had a lot of tests and medicine. The tests were to find out what was wrong with her liver. Her insides were attacking her liver. The disease is called “Autoimmune Hepatitis”. It is Latin for liver disease. She needed to have a liver transplant because her liver broke down and she turned yellow. Having a liver transplant means that they take out your liver and put in a new one. Her liver came from a dead person.
My family was very worried. My mom went to the hospital almost every day. My grandpa was very worried, too. He was almost always with my grandma. My grandma was unconscious most of the time she was in the hospital.
When my grandma finally got out of the hospital, she had to take medicine and she still has to take many pills every day. They make her shaky. She is not allowed to eat some things. She takes all this medicine so that the same thing doesn’t happen to her new liver, and so that her body gets used to her liver.
My grandma still does almost everything that she used to do before she had the liver transplant. She could not do many things right after the transplant, though. This year, she got a lot stronger. This teaches me that even if your body isn’t strong, you can still try to do what you like to do if your mind is strong.