How's this for a first draft of a personal statement?

[tredway]

Prompt: "State your career goals and briefly summarize your major educational and vocational interests and achievements. Indicate the areas in which you expect graduate education at Boston University to have the greatest value for your future plans and goals. Include academic and/or practical reasons that you wish to attend our University."

Here's the essay (the conclusion is posted in the "extra details" section):
Grandma is definitely the storyteller in my family. Growing up, she always told me countless stories about her life: she told me about the house she was born and raised in – the house I live in now; her life as a young girl, being raised on a dairy farm in a small town in Massachusetts; her time as a nurse in the Red Cross during World War II and the Korean War, and how she met my grandfather in Seoul, South Korea while he was on a tour with the Army; and, most importantly, about her family – our family – and our great history. I thought that Grandma would always be able to effortlessly tell me stories – that is, until she had a mini-stroke in 1999.
Transient Ischemic Attack, or TIA. That’s what Grandma had, according to the doctors. Of course, since I was only nine when it happened, I didn’t really understand what that meant. Grandma seemed normal to me. It wasn’t until years later that I would truly understand the impact of this episode.
As the years went on, Grandma increasingly had trouble finding “just the right words,” as she would say. She would start to tell me a story – usually about her sister, who lives in the Berkshires -- and it seemed like she would suddenly lose her train of thought. Grandma would sit across from me, struggling to come up with the words to finish her sentence; she knew what she wanted to say, she just couldn’t find a way to express it. As I got older, I understood what the doctors had been saying about her all along: Grandma has expressive aphasia.
Grandma has increasingly kept to herself these days. At parties and family functions, she prefers to sit in the corner of the room and talk to one or two people, while politely smiling at others as they walk past. She hasn’t socialized much since my grandfather died in 2007, and that has only made her expressive aphasia worse. Speech therapy has always been available to my grandmother, but she adamantly refuses it as only a 91-year-old, supremely stubborn woman could. Still, we have made our own adaptations: I have become particularly adept at deciphering what Grandma is trying to say, and I can usually finish her sentences for her. We still laugh and joke and tell stories – but at our own pace, on our own time. We play by Grandma’s rules.
Stories close to my heart – stories like my Grandma’s – inspire me to pursue a career in Speech-Language Pathology. I came from a difficult medical background myself, as I was diagnosed with a mild form of spastic diplegic cerebral palsy and a mitral valve defect in my heart; I also suffered a concussion in August 2011 that forced me to withdraw from Temple University for the Fall semester and return to UMass Dartmouth in January 2012. Even though there have been a few bumps in the road and my college career has not gone as smoothly as I had planned, I feel that my experiences thus far in my life have enabled me to relate to others that have gone through some sort of medical struggle. My concussion, in particular, has given me perspective about the trials and tribulations that individuals with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) go through on a daily basis. This is where my main educational and vocational interests lie.
I first became interested in traumatic brain injuries during my recreational therapy internship at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Summer 2011. I was disappointed when I was placed on the TBI unit, because I really wanted to work with individuals that had spinal cord injuries (SCIs). I quickly realized, though, that I could have a major impact with the TBI patients. I soon immersed myself in any and all information about TBIs and their potential side effects – especially aphasia. I can honestly say that the conclusion of my internship was one of the worst days of my summer. I had so much fun interacting with patients and hearing their stories, watching individuals progress from speaking as little as one word to communicating in full sentences; I saw the joy on family members’ faces as their loved ones slowly regained a sense of “normalcy” following their injuries. After this internship, I knew TBIs were going to be my main focus in my future career. Boston University is the best place to start.