Jeremy

• by ellen
• 2008-07-26 07:07:27
• Coping
• 1877 views
• 7 comments

My son Jeremy has had a pacemaker since he was 3 yrs old. He is now 15. He is doing great. He is in the band and can play three or four instruments. He is a A/B student and most people do not know he has a pacemaker. He is very normal and we forget he has a pacemaker. At least other people do. I am mo and I try to act like I forget. I worry for when he graduates hopefully from college, about how he will do with insurrance and things. Here is a paper he wrote for school. I thought it might incourage kids that are younger than him. He had a rough time ajusting in middle school but has come into his own. I had a run in with a teacher last year though who had the nerve to tell him he needed to make a choice in her class about something stupid. She told him he would have to make them in life. I told her that he had made many more chioces than she probrably had ever in her young life. She did not know he had a pacemaker and thought he was just being a teenager. Anyway I wonder if anyone else has had trouble with other people? Here is the paper:
“You Can Do Anything You Set Your Minds To”
By: Jeremy Wood
Did you ever remember when your mom wanted you to be the best you could be? Mine still does, but I have a pacemaker and it has made life rough on me. I can’t play sports like football, basketball, or baseball, because they are all physical contact sports and this might hurt my pacemaker. Although I do throw the football with my brother, you know just throwing, no contact. My parents are always fussing with my brother and me, because we are always trying to tackle each other. We also wrestle all the time, like most boys do. I am pretty much a normal boy, just with a few limitations.
I got the pacemaker around three years old. This did not affect me until when I went to middle school and I wanted to play football. Since I had the pacemaker I couldn’t play and you know that was a downer. That’s when my mom gave me these wise words “You can do anything you set your mind to.”
That got my spirit going good. I probably would be a decent wide receiver, but since I couldn’t play football I am in the high school band. My pacemaker makes it hard for me to run, because it is like a battery and it gets low when I run. Guess what I did at band camp? We ran like crazy.
Every day when we got there the band director would tell us to go out to the football field and run for about four laps. I wanted to give up: then I remembered the words that my mom told me and that kept me running without passing out. Band has been the best thing in my life, because it is one of my dreams of being a famous musician. So I’m going to set my mind on it. Knowing this I try to get myself acquainted with the brass instruments. Right now I know how to play about three to five of them. I know how to play Trumpet, Baritone T.C., French horn, almost got the Trombone down, and last but not least melephone.
When band came into my life I was always the little shy kid in the corner, but now I have all these friends in the band and that is cool. You can’t always go for a goal you want because of physical limitations, and sometimes people don’t always go for what they want because they don’t have the courage to go for it. That is when you have to set your mind to do it. I didn’t like being the shy kid and I don’t think you would to. Don’t be that kid be the kid who doesn’t get what he or she wants.
When you set your mind you would be excited to see what kinds of crazy and bazaar things you could do. Like in band you have these freaky notes that make you think that your band director is retarded to think that you could play that. Then at the end of all of the practices you would be like that was easy. Doing big things has always been done with just a little of setting your mind on what you want and going for it. So remember when you set your mind you can do just about anything you want to do. So set your mind and live your life.