By SOFIA PITT
STAFF WRITER
 Mike Carroll (top)
|
|
A Rutgers student with a life-threatening condition called Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia has found the strength to persevere.
Michael Carroll, a 20-year-old Rutgers student, was born with this rare disorder.
According to UCFSmedicalcenter.org, this creates a hole in the diaphragm and causes organs in the abdomen to move into the stomach. |
|
Most infants with the condition have only a small piece of their diaphragm missing, but Carroll was missing the entire left side of his diaphragm.
According to RealhopeforCDH.com only 50 to 65 percent of infants survive CDH, though his prognosis was potentially more dire because of less advanced medical technology and the increased severity of his condition.
After numerous surgeries and 360 days in Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Carroll was able to survive because he has a Gore-Tex patch in place of the left side of the diaphragm.
Carroll said he’s beaten the odds of his condition and he has learned many lessons from his medical situation. Carroll was an honors student in high school. He has had difficulty with the pressures of college life and his grades have suffered.
But he is not about to give up on his academics. “I thought about my medical struggles and how far I have come from 20 years ago,” he said. “I am grateful to be in college, let alone on this Earth. I fought through CDH, and I can fight through this.”
In order to graduate on time, Carroll has laid out a strict plan for himself, which includes attending every class session and finishing every assignment on time.
Despite this difficult situation, Carroll is able to reflect on the situation constructively.
“I will probably need to stay in college an extra year to patch up my mistakes and to earn my degree,” he said. “But as with most other things in my life, I started behind my peers and need to work harder to catch up to them.”
Carroll is a family man who valued his uncle's opinions during some of the most difficult times in his life. He told him how his parents never gave up on him, and did everything in their power to keep him alive.
“My family believed in what I could do in the future," he said, “Now I must refuse to allow myself to fail in my quest to discover my life’s role.”
Instead of seeing his academic struggles as yet another set back in Carroll’s life, he has taken a lesson away from this experience. “Although the timing was poor, I am glad it happened, because otherwise I would have relied on my sheer talent and probably would have not worked as hard to get where I wanted to go,” Carroll said.
Carroll has plans to use his degree in Journalism and Media studies and minor in Spanish towards a career in sports law or sports journalism. This Rutgers student is on a quest to discover his life’s work and he will not let his struggles hinder him.
“My philosophy is that everyone has a unique role in life,” he said. “The purpose of life is to discover what that role is and to fulfill that role successfully.” |
