"Living life
from a hospital room"
By: Claire Wineland
Source: CNN News
Claire
Wineland is a seventeen-year-old senior in high school. She, like thousands of
other people is living on this planet, sick. She spends a lot of time in the
hospital, receiving treatments to stay alive. She was born with cystic
fibrosis, a life-threatening disorder that causes severe damage to the lungs
and digestive system. She writes this article,
not to make it a sob story or to make people feel bad for her, but to accomplish
the complete opposite. She wants to "share a story about finding joy and
beauty in places that others see pain and suffering. I am sick, yes. But I am
so much more" (Wineland, 1). The people who came to visit Claire always
stated that they were sorry for her and the kind of life she lived, but Claire
would argue with them, tenaciously. She tried to show these people that although
the hospital life was different from their own, it was anything but depressing.
Sure, there were the endless treatments, procedures, tests, and doctors finding
something else wrong with Claire's body, but there were also bliss moments of
happiness and laughter, those moments where she saw how wrong the world had
been: "A short life CAN be as rich as a long one" (Wineland, 1).
When Claire was thirteen, her and her parents started a foundation to support
others living with cystic fibrosis, called the Claire's Place Foundation. When
she was fourteen, she became a public speaker, and now she creates a video
series called "The Clarity Project." Her video series "shines a
light" on the hospital life and breaks down the barriers around people who
are sick. Claire says, "Some things in life are ours to choose,
while other things choose us. I never chose to live this crazy bizarre life
with cystic fibrosis, and I didn't wake up from the coma with a plan to move my
life down a totally different path. Yet that seems to be exactly what happened.
And, of course, I wouldn't want it any other way."
This
article is important, as it makes its audience realize that they should be
grateful for the healthy life they live. It shows people that life does not
give them what they want; it gives them what they need, to make them into the
person they are meant to be.
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