Hello

Hi everyone, and welcome to my blog!

It is currently the summer after my sophomore year at UCLA, and I've been meaning to start my own blog for a while now after consistently pushing it off "until summer". In reality, I am about four weeks into my summer and I've been still procrastinating on starting my blog, mostly due to the fact that I am, unfortunately, taking dreaded summer school the entire summer. But what better way than to write my first post when I'm supposed to be studying for my first midterm that is coming up in four days? (Spoken like a true college student, am I right?)

I just wanted to give a really quick introduction, as I plan on writing a full blog post on my complete story. So starting with the basics -- my name is Sammi Chan, I'm 19 years old and split my residency between Silicon Valley in Northern California and sunny, beautiful Los Angeles. I am a young adult who lives with chronic illness--dilated cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease--and I also have an ICD (Implantable Cardioverter Defribrillator) implanted in me. On the outside, my appearance looks completely normal but I do deal with my own struggles living with heart disease, such as experiencing bouts of arrhythmia (irregular heart beats), being unable to exert myself physically, taking many medications, having countless doctor appointments and blood tests, and coping with anxiety. However, I do know my struggles are in no way any comparison to many other people's struggles which is why I am still grateful for my life and that my situation is not as dire as others.

So please stick around as I share with you my journey to how I am where I am today, and I hope I will not only be able to help others like me or even parents who have questions about their kids growing up with heart disease, but I would love to be able to meet others who are going through the same thing as I am.

I also plan on writing about miscellaneous things during my college experience at UCLA so I hope you enjoy!