Since the second I moved into my house at the beginning of the semester I have had one major issue with my room, my ceiling fan lights have not worked.

Every night I have to unscrew the lights by hand because a pull string is not connected to the fan. This is a minor inconvenience but a nuisance none the less. I have never fixed the light, simply because every day I say I will do it tomorrow or next weekend.

On Sunday, as I do every time I leave the house, I unscrewed the light bulbs and headed to work. At work, as I walked to the back room, I noticed one of my co-workers had a line of prescription bottles lined up along the desk.

She unscrewed each one, taking one to two pills from every bottle and took a drink of water with each, making sure not to miss one.

After joking with her about the amount of medication, she told me her doctors had prescribed her the pills because she was diagnosed with a rare, incurable autoimmune disease.

She will be 24 in two weeks.

She went on to explain the details of what is expected to happen to her over the course of the next five years.

She will be forced to move home to her family’s house and live with the idea she may never be a wife or mother. She will be forced to write a will and make arrangements for her own funeral before the age of 30.

The pills will only slow the process and ease some pain, but no medicine is available to cure her disease.

At first I was not sure how to react to this statement. I have never known someone my age until now who has been in this situation.

A couple hours later, another co-worker approached me to tell me she could cover my shifts during the last weekend of October.

I, along with 12 other journalism students, will attend a journalism conference, in the hopes of networking and learning concepts for my future career goals.

After this conversation had ended, I noticed my ill co-worker stocking shelves behind me.

I now realized what she might be going through.

She isn’t sure about her future, but one thing is certain. Her plans have been altered and cut short.

She told me she didn’t know what she was going to do when she moved home, but she knew she would get things done she always needed to do.

This struck me in an interesting way. Simply because someone has a clock on the amount of time they have left should not be the only motivation to complete a to-do list.

The next morning I fixed my fan.

Kayleigh Zyskowski is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at 591-7942 or [email protected].