Practicing as a nurse for 8 1/2 years I saw the hurt and the pain of so many individuals.
I cared for very sick patients on a ventilation unit. I was a new nurse and dealing with death was a part of my job. I had to grow thick skin. I couldn’t bring the pain and sickness of everyone home with me or I wouldn’t of been able to do my job.
As a new nurse, the first month on the job I had to familiarize myself with caring for the deceased, preparing the body and assisting the security guards with bringing the deceased to the morgue. This became a part of my job for the next 41/2.
My nursing career then brought me from working with very ill patients to caring for those in their homes. Patients that weren’t quite in the need of hospitalization and required continued teaching and monitoring at home. As a visiting nurse I also had to discuss plans for palliative care and help families make very difficult decisions to transition to hospice care.
For years I found myself wondering how different my patients lives would have been if healthier lifestyle changes were implemented earlier on.
Would there be less patients dependent upon medications, would they be breathing on their own rather than mechanically ventilated, could the change in their eating habits years before, lowered their risk of heart attack, congestive heart failure, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, depression, or kidney and liver failure.
I began to believe it was everyone’s life journey to end up on 4 or more medications later on in life. That hypertension was to be expected as we aged.
but…
Something in me wouldn’t give up the fight to educate healthier habits, ways to implement lifestyle changes even if seemed to late. I’d spend extra hours educating patients on label reading, how nutrition impacts their swelling, congestion, diabetic numbers, and more.
I educated on ways to treat the issue not just masking the issue with medication. I spoke belief into my patients to not give up hope. To still believe they can heal because mindset when someone is ill is very important.
I spoke with the elderly about depression and feeling a loss of control and how to regain control in small, yet impactful ways.
I had a desire to impact change in people, to go beyond the diagnosis. If your wondering why I’m so passionate about health and wellness it’s because I saw the impact not caring for ourselves now WILL IMPACT your future self.
I’m on a mission to help one person a day start an internal change within themselves to life healthier now to change their future in ways they can’t imagine. The average person doesn’t think about death or illness on a regular basis.
Our younger selves doesn’t believe the choices we make in our 20’s will impact or 60’s,70’s and 80’s. Everyone ages and death is inevitable but I want to meet both with a zest and excitement for life and as few trips to the doctor, hospital and need for medication as possible.
Today I pray God changes one person to see that their decisions today WILL and ARE impacting their quality of life later on and to start making changes NOW.
Please let me help just one more person today.
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