rromeo

My name use to be Rolando Alucio De Jesus Para Leeto Emilio and then my mom also kept calling me Romeo and that was actually about to be my name. I was given the nickname of Lil' Ro whether it is Romeo or Rolando.  I'm Mexican/Paraguayan/South African.  I may not look like it but I am..I speak English of course Spanish and Xhosa(one of my families native language in South Africa).  My birth dad I found out was from Umtata,South Africa.  Umzantsi Afrika(South Africa in isiXhosa) and his mother was South African and Latin which was cool and I was adopted by the Zulu culture..but yea I was adopted when I was 4 1/2 and I got to see my auntie which I now see her up in King City.  My family was poor and I just was born at home.  My mother was Maria Antoinetta Para n my dad who left both my mom and me was named Dominic.


Throughout my life I have gone through various challenges, as well as achievements in my life. I come from a small village in Paraguay, where I lived in a house with my birth mom and her family. The village where I was born did not have a hospital and I was born at home. I did not know my birth father. My birth mother was very young and did not have enough money to keep me so she gave me to her brother and his wife. I stayed with them until I was almost two years old and then my birth mother and her new boy friend came and got me. We went to live in Asuncion. The man that lived with my birth mom would beat me and her every night. He was always drunk. When I was about three years old, birth mom had another baby. Her family convinced her that it would be better if she put the baby up for adoption because they were afraid the boy friend would kill the baby. They also told her it would be better for me if she put me up for adoption too. I was very sick and couldn't walk very far. They didn't know what was wrong with me. I didn't get adopted right away and went to live in an orphanage. I got sicker and sicker and finally the lawyer took me out of the orphanage and put me in a foster home. I was so sad and hurt that I stopped talking. One night the lawyer came to visit me with a friend of hers and that friend decided I should go live with her. She had a daughter with a disability and the daughter couldn't talk either. The daughter went to a special school for kids with Down Syndrome. They put me in the same school because I couldn't walk and didn't talk. I lived with the lawyer and her family until I was four and a half. Then they decided that it would be better if I could be adopted by someone else. The family that adopted me lived in San Francisco. Now coming to country and state that I didn't know at all kind of scared me, but I was happy at the same time. I was scared at meeting all the new people. I couldn't understand English. I had a room all to myself, but I was afraid of being alone. I had never slept by myself in all my life and I thought I was being punished when I had to go to bed alone. Though I felt welcomed by this new family and felt that I wasn't going to be hit anymore and only loved.


When I came to America I had medical problems that, if left untreated, would be fatal. I was in a big kids stroller or a wheelchair because I couldn't walk beyond a block and I had constant pain. It took a long time for the doctors to find out what was wrong with me. Both of my hips were out of joint and my ankles and wrists were swollen and sore all the time. The x-rays showed that one of my hips had been pulled out of the socket when I was being abused. One of my arms had been broken at about the same time. I went to Kaiser Permanente, which was my first hospital in San Francisco. The doctors there could not figure out the problem and sent my records to specialists at UCSF, UCLA, John Hopkins, and Mayo Clinic. After about nine months, Mayo Clinic made a diagnosis. I have a very rare metabolic bone disorder that is caused by the over secretion of parathyroid hormones and the over secretion of thyroid hormones. It caused my kidneys to leech calcium out of my bones in order to maintain the calcium levels in the blood. It took another five or six months until they decided how it should be treated. I'm now on medication and have my blood levels checked on a regular basis. This treatment will continue for the rest of my life unless they develop another way to treat the problem.


The medication worked and my bones grew harder and became normal. It took about two years until I was able to walk without pain. I take my pills faithfully and lead a normal life.


From Paraguay to America, all these experiences – the adjustment to a new family, a new country, a new life, and learning to live with a life-long medical condition -have given me a resilience that will serve me well as I adjust to the new demands, new friends, and new challenges in college. As my father always says to people " He is the best adjuster ever." One of the ways I have learned to deal with situations is to adjust. I observe the situation; I think about the different aspects of it; I try to make sense of it; and then I adjust. While I don't always agree with what's happening or being said, I think I'm able to be a positive force in the situation. Rather than making situations worse, I try to make them better. College will result in a lot of challenges to be faced, but I can make that a success. Challenges that we face can make us stronger.