Personal Narrative: My Life With A Disease

Sometimes I ask myself how I overcame my disease. Many people with lupus experience fatigue, memory loss, loss of appetite. Usually younger African, white, and Asian men and woman develop that disease in their teens. It all started that night when I was laying in my mom bed. At that time I felt like it was my time to leave this earth. When I turn 15 years old I saw so many changes. . I experience so many symptoms while I was in my second semester. All the symptoms that I experience were hallucinations, fever, nausea, and nose bleeds. At that time I seen myself getting really sick. I caught strep throat and it was hard to focus in school because I missed so many days.

I fight for my health every day in ways most people do not understand I lay in bed struggling just to get up in the morning only to get faced with a new day of troubles. All I think about is the day that being a normal eighteen year old ended for me. I was responsible went to work every day, and was trying to figure out my first year of college until everything was flipped upside down.

When my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, we were all very sad, but she believed that she could win. There are five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She never got to the stage of acceptance because she knew she was strong enough to fight this rigorous battle. Although she knew the cancer was inside of her, she never let it change her life. She always looked on the bright side of things and saw this illness as an opportunity to live life to the fullest and be with family more. Being optimistic makes her a hero because thinking on the bright side gave her a positive attitude and gave her the strength to fight against

The most significant challenged I ever faced is being diagnosed with severe Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome my junior year of college. Receiving my diagnosis I was upset and negative about the situation. I knew financially I could not get the surgery, and I knew I needed to push on through college. Nevertheless, I never let my diagnosis get the best of me. My diagnosis did not get the best of me because I started to see it as a positive challenge. Additionally, I realized my diagnosis taught me important life lessons. One of the life lessons taught to me, by my diagnosis, was to not add constant stress to the situation out of my control. If a situation is out of my control, like being diagnosed with WPW, the worst response is constant

My first week went really well! I was definately both nervous and excited on the first day. I was nervous because I wasn't sure how the clinic would run and I quickly learned that it is a very fast paced clinic. My CI sees patients every 15 minutes and he is both the only PT there and the owner of the clinic. I have been learning a lot about PT treatments as well as the buisness side of the PT clinic. He has a lot of PT aides that help with exercises and setting patients up with ice and stim ect. The fast paced clinic was definately something I had to get used to. I was a little overwhelmed when we would just start with a patient and a new patient would walk in the door. However, there is a very good flow in the clinic and everyone is always

One of the most difficult things I’ve ever experienced has been my battle with cancer. When I was 21 I was preparing to submit my mission papers. What was supposed to be a simple physical exam, turned into an unexpected battle. In October 31, 2013 my doctors diagnosed me with papillary cancer. I had surgery, and a couple weeks after had radiation treatment. Months later I was told I was cancer free, and I received my mission call. I was assigned to serve in the Colorado Denver South Mission. Unfortunately a week after I got my mission call, I was told that my cancer was back, and had actually spread to my lymph nodes; its next target would be my lungs, thus making my goal to serve a mission seem further from my reach. I went through the process

Today in clinical, I offered a male patient to perform a full bed bath. It was my first time performing a full bed bath on a male and the thought of this made me feel a little nervous because I had only practiced this task in the simulation lab and the thought of performing peri-care on the male gender was intimidating. I began to gather my items and throughly think about how I would normally perform a bed bath on a female and the difference of genital areas. As I brought the items into the room, my patient was friendly and helpful in directing his preferences of which areas he wanted to be washed first. His friendly personality made me calm down in a situation where I would normally be on my toes, as I was not thinking about my

Being a cancer survivor presents many persistent challenges. Despite those challenges, I graduated high school with honors. Hope for an uncertain future comes in part from the salvation I find in being a college student.

Living with cancer is an enormous challenge, and most of us are encouraged to try coping skills like yoga, meditation and patient support groups. While I have found several techniques helpful, expressive writing has been surprisingly therapeutic for me. This seemed to come out of nowhere. I had published journal articles, book chapters and scientific papers during my career. I had even written a few simple rhymes for social occasions and business functions, but I had never considered doing any creative writing before cancer struck. My cancer adventure began early in 2014 when a large tumor was discovered in my head and neck. This explained my recent hearing loss and the jaw pain I had felt for some time. It was an advanced, high-grade cancer,

Today was the second day of my 6-week placement at Ward 3A-Logan Hospital, I have originally been paired with a demand casual pool RN, however, the said RN is not confident enough to handle me as her student nurse at the time. After the scrum at 7am, and the handover on the 4-bed bay + sides, I politely ask her if I could take one patient as it was one of the instructions of my CF during the orientation on day 1, but I was answered with “I’m not really familiar with the area and I’m from the demand casual pool...” Having sighted my CF at the corridors, I excused myself from the RN and discussed the matter to my CF, and she allowed me to be buddied with a very good EN, informing me that “she is an EN” before letting me to the bay and introducing me to my new buddy EN.

Being diagnosed with cancer I knew I only had one option and that was to take it to the Lord and when I did, wow! He not only healed me He delivered me too of addictions! I repented of my sins to Jesus with my whole heart and He healed me! Not instantly it was a process for months, everything except drinking and smoking that He did

This week I had rotation at Genesis and also Cumberland Hall. Genesis was very different that what I expected. When I think of a “rehab” I think of people all sitting around with major withdrawal symptoms, a very strict schedule, multiple one-on-one session, and with no smoke breaks. At Genesis, throughout the day the client was able to do their own thing until the scheduled group session and smoke breaks. I was placed on the male unit and I was very surprise of the self-awareness that I experienced. Just listening men talk and tell their stories brought on a whole new prospective and quickly changed the image of the addict stereotype. While I was there we also established that all the clients was first timers and all fathers, and afterwards I was able to sit and think about how grateful I am to have my father who’s not an addict. I have had the luxury of always having a clean and sober father; which I had taking for granted.

“If you look for the light you will often find it, but if you look for the dark. That is all you will ever see.”- Uncle Iroh from Avatar the Last Airbender. I am a dragon that spreads fire throughout the world, leaves scars on family, and has always tried to be stopped. What am I? I’m disease.Flowers with cards. IV’s in a tangled ball. Crayon drawings of horses. Worksheets that aren’t completed. 1st grade was to hard for them.They thought, was this normal for any normal family starting to move into a new town? Breath, sleep, awake, and repeat. MRI’s and surgeries take a toll on your health. Speak friend and enter. When a normal family like this one discovers a horrid conflict within their own family everything goes dark. The television seems

Dealing with this brain tumor has been very taxing the last couple of months. It started with frequent headaches accompanied by black spots in my vision. This absolutely freaked me out and I was at my doctor’s office within the week, he then referred me to a neurologist who ordered a CT scan for me. The tumor is the size of a Penney and I now have to see an oncologist. They have ordered me to have chemotherapy as well as radiation. The chemotherapy makes me sick and nauseas but the medical marijuana that the Doctor prescribed has helped with my appetite. I have been lucky enough to keep my hair although it is thinner unfortunately my eyebrows are gone and I now have to draw them in. I’m very blessed with an employer that is understanding and