Undergraduate / Common App Essay on Surgery and Showering [4]

It would be a huge help if I could get someone to help me read this over - maybe cut it down, check it grammatically, and see if it was effective.

Also if someone could help me think of a title that would be GREAT
Thank you so much in advance

Screws? You are literally going to take a drill and put screws into my spine?

On August 7th of 2008, Dr. Luk broke the news that I would have to undergo a scoliosis surgery.
Screws? You are going to take a drill and put screws into my spine?

I had worn a back brace for two years prior to this day. The back brace itself was a tough step for me. I was an eight-grade girl locked in a hard, plastic torso. However, I was never ashamed. Instead, I fully accepted the humorous, "Kung-Fu-Fighter-With-Rock-Hard-Abs" label my friends had given me, and even took strength from it. Little did I know then that two years later I would be promoted to "Iron-woman"; the girl in sophomore year with two metal rods and twenty-two screws fused on adjacent sides over the length of her spine.

While the doctor explained the complications that could arise from the operation, including nerve damage, blindness, and paralysis, I thought of the drills, knives, and hammers that would break into the innermost parts of my body to reconstruct me. I had about a month from when I was given this news until my surgery. I was scared but I didn't show much emotion. Between the numerous hospital visits I tried to stay strong for my parents, but mostly for myself. The time passed quickly and soon I found myself, nose filled with the now familiar smell of antiseptic, on my hospital bed on September 23rd; the night before my surgery.

My friends and family worried and consoled me about my impending 11-hour surgery the next day. But my wavering thoughts, stuck in a limbo between courage and cowardice, settled on my shower.

Showering is quite the prized possession in my everyday life. It is that one time of night, morning, or day when I am alone with myself in my own skin with no one or thing to disturb me. Showering is a rite of passage - something that takes years to perfect. Through all the fright about the length of my recovery and the pain that came with it, somehow the only thing that really pulled down my strength that night, was the idea that I would have to let go of my showers. How was I possibly going to let someone else snatch this well-earned independence of mine?

I cried that day because my kung-fu self did not want to accept that I may never be able to shower alone again. I had always been the fighter and taken strength from my nickname, I could not now accept being weak, helpless, and entirely dependent.

Things changed, of course, post-surgery. The first two days, my morphine intake was extensive enough for me not to remember much. I was a breathing human tangled up in pipes, needles, and bare consciousness. On the fifth day though, I finally began feeling human - I felt the pain, I felt the weakness, but somehow I did not care. In fact, somewhere between semi-awareness and full-awareness, I had overcome my stubbornness. I was helpless. But I woke up each day to a yellow wallpaper of signatures, balloons, flowers and get-well messages. It was because of this structure of support behind me, that I never even had the chance to whine about my loss of independence. Instead, I marveled at the number of people I could depend on, and relished on their outreached hands. Shower or no shower, I was Iron-woman now. Even Iron-woman needs a human backbone at the weakest of times.