When I was growing up, my life was quite tumultuous. There was a lot of chaos and it became my job to start taking care of other people. Eventually, I started to develop a multitude of medical problems as a preteen. When I was 13, I started to have muscle and nerve pains, numbness and tingling in my legs, and migraines. I had no idea what was going on with me and wanted to be normal like everyone else. I had been playing softball with the town league for the past few years and this was a great love of mine. My medical journey really started while I was at a practice out in right field and my legs suddenly collapsed. They had been hurting and getting numb when I lost all feeling. It was scary and obviously concerning. This started the long hunt to figure out what was wrong with me. We saw many doctors, many specialties, and even some quacks when we started to lose faith in finding answers. I saw one naturalist that was recommended by my pediatrician who had me lying on a table in a dark room and starting to take medications - if that’s what you’d call it. I started to take over 10 different pills a day. I was 13 and needed a pill box. This doctor had me taking all sorts of supplements such as magnesium, oregano tablets, and even more weird things. This doctor even told me that I needed to stop wearing rings on certain fingers because they were causing my migraines (a little spoiler, that didn’t change anything). What was most creepy was that whenever I was there, this doctor (an older man with a creepy vibe) always told my dad how beautiful I was and that I looked just like an angel.
I also saw a specialist in reiki. This man practiced in the basement of a fitness center and the hallway to his office was down a hallway with burnt orange shag carpeting. This doctor’s office was very dark and he discussed a very long diet that he suggested I follow. He wanted me to cut out nearly everything from my diet including chocolate, milk products, pasta, bread, etc. Looking at these recommendations now, I think he might have had something there but what 13 year old who is fresh to puberty can cut chocolate out of their diet? As reiki is the manipulation of the energy of your body, he obviously moved his hands around different parts of my body. Meanwhile, you must know that I sincerely questioned if this man was a werewolf. He had very thick, very dark brown hair that came out of the sleeves of his shirt and covered the tops of his hands all the way to his knuckles.
(For real I think this is a self portrait!) He also was extremely tall and the fact that he was in a dark, basement office creeped me out. What really topped the cake was that he put finger cots on and then would rub his finger in my ears and in my mouth. I think I only saw him twice before I told my mom I was too creeped out and did not want to go back. I experienced physical therapy, CT scans, blood work, and much more. I even did a sleep study that summer. It was exhausting! Out of this whole experience though, I found that a majority of the doctor’s did not speak to me as if I should be involved in the decision making of my own body. I understand that I was a child and my parent’s ultimately made the decision, but as a budding teenager, I felt that I was capable of helping make these decisions and should be spoken to as such. Some doctors told me I was faking it or needed to “build my pain tolerance” because nothing was wrong with me. And all the tests showed that there was nothing wrong. Clearly though, something was wrong. It may have been completely psycho-somatic but it was happening and I was scared. Through this all, the best experiences that I had, majorly occurred when I was with the nurses. These nurses saw that I was scared, that I needed to be spoken to like a person, and always gave me a smile (even when I was acting like a pubescent girl with an attitude). As I had to start making the decision of what I wanted to be when I grew up, I just knew that I wanted to do something to help other people. I didn’t know what I wanted to do exactly. I considered forensic science, physical therapy, and more. I was able to do an internship in my senior year of highschool at a local physical therapy office. I thought this was what I wanted to do. I had been in physical therapy on and off for the past four years and I always enjoyed the experience and the people. After interning, I realized that a majority of the patients were hip or knee replacements. It was mostly the same thing with just a different body all day long. I was bored. And I didn’t want to have to go to school that long before I could even start working in the career I wanted to work in. So, I started looking into nursing after the recommendation of a very special teacher. There was also the fact that I had become pregnant in my senior year and my life was falling apart (but that’s a completely different story). I fell in love with nursing immediately.
It was extremely hard and scary to go through nursing school but I still think to this day that it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I absolutely love what I do. I have never looked at my career and thought “maybe I want to do something else.” When people ask me what my dream job is, I tell them “this”. I fully believe that everything happens for a reason (no matter how shitty the journey was) and I believe that I NEEDED nursing. It has helped me become the woman that I always wanted to be growing up.
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