At the time I was born, my dad was a heavy drinker. My mom liked to indulge as well. However, my dad's health was deteriorating since his kidneys stopped working well. He was trying to avoid dialysis so he visited doctors in Mexico and tried a variety of remedios or remedies. Nothing worked. Instead, he was on dialysis for ten years while he waited for a kidney transplant. Each year that passed, my dad was getting visibly more ill yet that did not stop him from drinking.

I grew up around my dad because he was the first person to take care of me. He had a strong bond. We shared the same clothing style, interests, and hobbies, and we liked the same stuff overall. We got along well because his parenting wasn’t as harsh, as that was left for my mom which somewhat affected my relationship with her. I always had a close bond with my dad. My dad's health problems started around the time I was born so I was too young to know about what he was going through until I was older.

I would always wait for my dad to come in the trolley that runs through our town around the time I would get out of school. I would wait for him at the stairs. One day, my dad rushed in covering his arm and said that he had to go to the emergency room. I had to wait a few days until I could visit him in the hospital. He had surgery. He had experienced a blockage in the blood vessel used to give him his dialysis treatment. A key component that was keeping him alive became inaccessible and threatened his life.

Once I somewhat started to understand my dad's problem, I realized that my dad was different from everyone else's dads since he was older than them. At some point, somebody even thought that he was my grandpa but it made me feel unique. I was the only one of my friends with a dad over 50 years old besides my friend who also had an older dad.

My dad's health problems didn’t allow him to get a job so my mom was the only one working. We did not have a lot of money so I didn’t have a phone or any gaming consoles. I always wanted to see my dad healthy since it sucked to see him tired and ill since I always liked to play soccer and run. I couldn't do it with my dad so I would do it with my cousins. They would also take me to the park but I would just play alone with a ball and practice passing or shooting with a fence, tree, or wall. If I was lucky, some random kid who also played soccer would let me play with him. I was pretty alone most of the time.

In 5th grade, my dad got the call. The phone rang and my dad looked more excited than I had seen him in a while. He had a donor! On average, it takes a person five years of waiting to get a transplant. My dad waited twice as long. He had started to get weak. My mom and I were the only motivation he had to keep trying. He got the transplant at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. His skin had looked dead for most of my life. After his transplant, his skin looked more vibrant. He was even more vibrant and alive than I had seen him before. He was peeing more which meant that his kidneys finally worked. I now realize that my dad could have died at any second without me even knowing about the risk he was living through.

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