How I Overcome My Greatest Fear

1180 Words5 Pages
How I overcame my greatest fear Everybody has their own fear. Some people are afraid of insects. Some fear darkness. Others are scared of height. Whatever our fear is, we have to confront it in our life. But have you ever faced the fear of death at the age of twenty? I did. I am not a healthy person. During the time I grew up, I got a sore throat almost every two months, which causes me a hoarse voice. When I talk on the phone, people always mistake me with a man. Even once, when I came to my friend’s house, her little sister kept looking curiously at me and asked me: “Are you a boy or a girl?” “What do you think?” - I asked her back “I don’t know. You look like a girl but your voice sounds like a boy”. I didn’t know how to answer. That time, I got a sore throat as usual. I got used to it, so I didn’t worry at all. I just took some over the counter drugs, but I didn’t recover after a month, so I went to see my family doctor to check up. What the doctor said came upon me like a thunderbolt: “You have symptoms like a hoarse voice, usually get a sore throat that lasts long, trouble breathing, a cough that doesn’t go away … Your grandpa got laryngeal cancer. It is still in research, but some experts think that laryngeal cancer is hereditary disease. So, you have an increased risk. I recommend you go for a test as soon as possible.” The next thing I realized that I have been sitting in front of my laptop for hours, crazily searched for any websites that had “laryngeal cancer”, devoured them, and found out that laryngeal cancer is the second most popular ENT disease in Vietnam. I couldn’t help but burst into tears. Hundreds of question haunted my mind. What if I got cancer for real? Did it hurt? Was it painful? Did I have to do the radiation therapy, and lose all my hair, like in movies? Would I die? With the medical treatment of a poor country like
Open Document