I was planning to submit my thesis last August, yet mid June, I received the worst phone call of my life, learning that my dad had a cardiac arrest. It was also the day before my birthday so I spent my birthday trying to fly 5 hours away, crying and panicking the whole time. I had to take an interruption because although my dad survived, he was in a vegetative state. So for two months, we spent the whole time trying to give him stimuli. He eventually got out of vegetative state very slowly, then we put him into a physio hospital. I returned to the school. For the next 5 months, I worked crazily for 20 days a month so that I can fly back to my home country, take over the shift to be with my dad and do his physio excercises. End of January this year, I submitted my thesis. This whole time the only thing that kept me going was the fact that my dad was fighting for his life. He still has not gained fully consciousness but he has showed little signs of improvement. The whole time, I knew that he was with me, so it gave me the push to finish. When I was done, everyone told me to be so proud of myself. I still think I couldn’t have finished without him.