As soon as we moved here, my parents enrolled me in a brilliant school called Most Precious Blood of Jesus Catholic School. I love my school! I have many friends and fantastic teachers. I am in the 5th grade and math is my favorite subject.

 

Something happened to me that made me miss a year of school. When I thought about what I should write on my Catholic Kids 101 page, I decided I would tell you what happened to me during that year.

 

At the beginning of 2nd grade, when I was 7 years old, I started to feel tired. Even when I got lots of sleep I still felt tired. One day I was at school playing soccer. I was about to kick the ball when I suddenly felt so tired and weak I could hardly move. I had to sit right down on the ground and rest for a few moments before I could get up and walk again. I had never felt that way before.

 

I remember that night in bed I was trying to fall asleep but the bones in my legs and feet were aching. I couldn't sleep because it hurt so much. I was going to get up and ask my mum for some pain medicine but I felt too tired to get up! Sometime in the night I finally fell asleep.

 

The next morning I was about to tell my mum about my aching bones but before I could say anything she looked at me and said I had “sick eyes” and asked me what was wrong. I told her how I was feeling. Then I went and looked in the mirror to see what “sick eyes” look like. I thought my eyes looked exactly the same as they always did but mums are pretty smart when it comes to noticing things about their children. Don’t you think? 

 

Anyway, she took me to see the doctor and then he sent me to another doctor and then that doctor sent me to another doctor who was a special kind of doctor that helped really sick children. I found out I was really sick. My sickness had to do with my blood. I had a sickness called Leukemia. My blood was sick. Leukemia is a cancer of the person’s white blood cells. The “sick” white blood cells form in a person’s bone marrow. They quickly travel throughout the body and crowd out the healthy blood cells. This raises the person’s chances of getting really sick with an infection and other problems. Without healthy blood our organs, like our heart and lungs, don’t get the oxygen and help they need to work right. We need healthy blood to fight infections. We need healthy blood to stay warm. Our blood is really important. Blood is life!

 

To get better I had to have treatments called chemotherapy for one year to try get rid of the sickness in my blood.

 

The treatments were hard. They made me feel really sick!

 

So this is the part of my story that I want every person reading my page to know about. This is super important and I hope you never forget it. The reason is that even if you don’t get sick like I did, every single person in the world will have something, some time in their life, that will be hard for them. We can choose to be bitter and get really angry about it or we can choose another way. The other way is to go through our hard time with Jesus. He truly understands! Jesus went through lots of hard times, especially when He suffered and died on the Cross for us. Our hard times by themselves are awful! But if we give our hard times to Jesus, He accepts them as precious gifts. He unites them to His sufferings and then they are not awful anymore. Then they become something meaningful because it was through the precious Blood of Jesus being shed, through His death on the Cross, that Jesus saved us from our sins. He lets us be a part of helping Him in His mission as Savior of the world! 

 

Here is the picture on the prayer card I had with me in the hospital that I kept by my bed: