Undergraduate / 'hectic and busy life' - Challenges/Hardships That Affected You (Personal Statement!) [4]

Looking for some assistance editing this paper since it's due in a couple of days and my Eng. teacher is swamped. Thanks guys!! Debating whether to take out the first sentence of the last paragraph. Thoughts?

If there are additional personal challenges, hardships, or opportunities that have shaped or impacted your abilities or academic credentials, which you have not already written about, please note them in the space below.

My life is hectic and busy, but I like it that way. From dance team to marching band, to clubs and academics galore, my agenda is covered in rainbow labels organizing each day to the minute. My schedule revolves around my ability to stay active and on my feet, so developing a debilitating condition a year into high school definitely put a dent into my plans.

Beginning the summer before tenth grade, chronic migraines began to slowly seep into my life. Starting with a slight pressure behind my eyes, I knew I had less than an hour before I would find myself unable to remain in the bright, noisy rooms that inhabited my school. Incapable of finishing a coherent sentence in my brain, my participation in class lacked even before the pain had begun. Instead of being enlightened by the metabolic pathways of cellular respiration, I spent several afternoons a month withered in the darkest corner of the nurse's office, desperately hiding away from the rest of the world. For two years, it continued.

Medication after medication was administered, yet none seemed to be the solution to the never ending headache, both figuratively and literally. I decided to take matters into my own hands. Researching herbal treatments and home remedies, I discovered the millions of individuals suffering just as I had. The community offered me a solution not yet suggested by my physicians: botulinum toxin, better known as BOTOX. The process produces paralysis of the muscles surrounding the trigeminal nerve, the same muscles whose spasms have wreaked havoc in my life for so long. After about thirty injections, I am free from migraines for the first time in years.

Although I was able to find a solution, there are several people still searching for a cure from the conditions that keep them from doing what they love. Because of this, as well as influence from those around me, I am pursuing biomedical engineering and medicine as a career. One of the fastest moving fields, biomedical engineering is the future of medicine, and I want to be a part of that. From genetic manipulation to cell regeneration, BME opens the doors that were never thought to exist in the search for cures.

Although my "special circumstances" did not consist of pancreatic cancer or living on the streets, this condition impaired my ability to succeed at my full potential. With the amount of class I was missing, I was always one step behind my classmates. Yet at the same time, I managed to climb in leadership in extracurricular activities, as well as remaining in the top of my class. I did not allow my circumstances to stop me from being the master of my own fate. Going through that time in my life helped me gain a sense of how to withstand challenges, and persevere, even when the outlook does not appear positive. Freed from one burden, I am more than prepared to take on the next. Today, as I go through my agenda, I see not the possibility of obstacle, but the future that I fought for.