My name is Zeno Artemis Aldopolous. As you can probably guess from my name, I am of Greek heritage. Greek on both my mom and pop's side, plus I have some French and Italian in me, too. Make things real fun! LOL I am thirteen years old, and I with my family in Tampa, Florida.
I have two brothers (Georg and Apolo) and three sisters (Magdalina, Isis, and Athena). I'm the oldest. It's a pain 'cause I often have to babysit them while mom and pop are at work. They own a Greek restaurant; it's their livelihood.
I look like a typical boy: brown, wavy hair, big, brown eyes, not too thin, but not fat either: built just right. I do have a disease, though, and sometimes it makes my life a living nightmare. I have thalessemia, which is a blood disorder. Basically, it means that I inherited it from both my parents; they had the defective defect, which, in turn, was passed on to us kids. It is an autosomal recessive disease of the blood.
It is treatable, but we kids have to take iron suppliments every day, and we often have to have transfusions because we can get very anemic if we don't have enough iron in our blood; we then get run down and tired, and it takes us a while before we can recuperate from the tiredness/weakness. We also had our spleens taken out when we were younger, to help curb the disease somewhat, but Athena and Isis, as well as Georg, still have problems and often end up in the hospital because their blood count gets so low.
Because of our blood disease, we can't really play high contact sports like baseball or football, but that's okay. We still can find things to do, like go swimming, play tennis or badminton, play chess, do archery, or play darts. We also like to bowl. We are quite active, even with having to live with thalessemia.
Sometimes, thalessemia can kill, but as long as we do what our doctors tell us and do the treatment/take the pills, etc., we are fine, and we can have a pretty normal life.
Our parents get the treatment too. We go to the hospital every two weeks for blood transfusions, and we have to take our iron suppliments every day, plus have Vitamin B-12 shots every few days. They have to endure wht we kids do, so at least we're all in this together; we're not alone.
Our parents got it from their parents, and they passed the disease on to us. (Lovely. Gee, thanks, mom and pop!)
I am in the eighth grade; I get pretty good grades. My friends know I have a disease, but most can't tell unless I'm paler than normal or exhausted, due to the lowered iron count in my blood. When my iron count is really low, all I want to do is sleep, and I feel like I've run twenty marathons in a row. It's really bad!
Guess this is why on Saturday I sleep in and don't rise until noon! LOL I would do the same thing on Sunday, but we have church; our family attends the Greek Orthodox church up the street from where we live. After church, we then go out and go to the park, where we kids fool around and have fun until it's time to go home for dinner and then go back to church for the evening services.
Well, I gotta run; have to change classes. Am at school as I write this; this is my assignment for today: write a short biography about yourself, so I did. Hope you enjoyed reading it! I will write more later; this won't be the last time you've heard from me, Zeno Artemis Aldopolous!
~Your new friend, Zeno. :)
*to be continued.*
