Personal Narrative: My Overall Health

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.

My health goals were to get to bed at a better time and to make sure I eat up to three meals a day.In the beginning it was hard because usually when I wake up I’m not very hungry for some reason, but then at school by the end of first period I am. It’s hard for me to eat in the morning because I'm too lazy to get out of bed. So to make sure I am able to eat, I go to bed earlier at the latest 10.

The phone was ringing as I stepped into my house. My mother picked up the phone without realizing she would shortly be sent to her knees. She yelled for me to get into the car and we rushed into the hospital. As hectic as the situation felt, time seemed to pass by very slow in that car. We finally arrived to the hospital to find my father nervously talking to the doctor. I learned that my brother had been brutally beaten up by a couple of teenagers on his way home from school and, as a result, had lost most of his teeth.

I was denied access to health care after my Nurse Practitioner wrote up an order for my x-ray. I had stopped by the front office for patient registration, inquiring why I kept seeing the amount of my bill go up to the tunes of hundreds of dollars, even though I was clearly punctual in making my co-payments after each visit.

Imagine a connected healthcare interface where your medications are linked to your smartphone, smart pill bottles remind you of when it’s time to take your medications, and prescription medications or surgeries are customized towards your individual genetic and physical needs. This is the future of healthcare - we just have a long way to go before we get there. As you look at startups in the healthtech space - many of them are well on their way to having one piece of the puzzle - AdhereTech with smart wireless pill bottle to TalkSpace with customized online mental health counseling. To create that integrated network I believe the buy-in will need to come from some of the largest healthcare companies currently, such as Johnson & Johnson, Cardinal

I sat at the kitchen counter, staring at the green cabinets and bowls of fruit. I wanted to play in tonight’s soccer game, but my mind was still foggy from the drugs I received in the hospital the day before. I didn’t want my teammates to see me like this. My hair was matted from where my head rubbed against the blue hospital pillow, and a wrinkled piece of clear tape secured a nasal feeding tube onto my cheek. I hated what the tube meant: that I was inadequate and that I couldn’t drink by myself. I was someone who insisted on doing everything on my own, and the thin, flexible tube was a physical reminder that I could not. My mom and dad lauded my bravery, but I dismissed them. I didn’t believe bravery was dictated by necessity.

There are more than four sources of vulnerabilities and/or risk factors that have presented themselves in the period of my lifespan. Risk factors can be described as “stressful life conditions” or “stressors” (Berk, 2012, p. 10). Often risk factors are interrelated and recurrent. These risk factors, if not blocked by positive intervention, can “impose particularly heavy developmental burdens during early childhood” (Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000, p. 7). My four area of vulnerability or risk factors that come to immediate recall are: 1) Living in a small rural town; 2) Being a member of a large family with a very modest income; 3) Being an overweight child; and 4) Life threatening illnesses, which

Sorry, I know you're asleep and I continuously keep texting you but I'd rather tell you everything now so you won't feel worried when you wake up when I will still feel asleep. What I wanted to tell you was that I just haven't been happy lately. Maybe it's because I miss you; because of all the shitty things that has been happening to me. I haven't been happy for over a week. But between us, all we do is argue and I'm so tired, Ciro. Sometimes I lay in bed and just grab my head because of how exhausted I am with the constant fightings. I have so many problems in my life and I have to go on and tell you everything that's happening when I shouldn't. It honestly makes things worse. I even cry because I can't take my life anymore. Believe me, I cry every single day. Not

The topic that interests me the most is disease prevention. My son was born with a developmental learning delay and sensory processing disorder. It hasn’t severely affected his ability to learn and socialize because he received different types of therapy since the age of 2-½. Since that time I was interested in researching the causes, symptoms and treatments of these disorders in order to support him socially and academically. My interest in disease prevention became more fascinating when some of my relatives and close friends informed me that they were battling different types of diseases such as breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, alcoholism, opioid addiction, depression, psoriasis, tachycardia and Paget’s disease. I wanted to

"There is one consolation in being sick; that is the possibility that you may return to a better state then you were ever in before." Henry David Thoreau

I picked Music for this week’s Self-care. I took 15 minutes out of my day and just laid on the bed and listened to slow and relaxing music. I did it in the middle of the day the first day but I fell asleep after so I just did it before bed for the rest of the week. I have heard about it before and how people listen to music while they study. I believe it was beneficial since it relaxed me enough to fall asleep. I feel like I had a better night of sleep since I wasn’t stressing.

Today, I am no longer in contemplation stage of reducing my risk factor.I am in the preparation stage because I am getting my workout gears ready for exercising. I cannot start exercising until I meet with my doctor because I have a slipped disk in my lumbar region of my spine. After my doctor visit and the exercise that I selected in my previous journal, he will let me know if I am ready to exercise. On the other hand, I am in the action stage with my diet and nutrition. I reduce the amount of sugar and starchy foods from my diet. I am consuming lots of fruits and vegetables as well as white meat. I try very hard to eat three meals each day and drink plenty of water. I really feel better about taking time out to be

Some other challenges I may face would be that I want to fix everyone. I do not ever want to get to the point where I am helping someone because it makes me feel good, I need to address within myself that I cannot help every single client that I will see. Some people will not want to change, and I am worried that my passion for helping people achieving the best quality of life possible will be something I will take home with me. I am worried I may ponder on what advice I could give a client to make them realize what I realize about their life; when in reality that is not my place nor is it my job. I have had patients at work in the past that I would see at least for a week out of every month, sometimes once a month, that would keep coming into

As I am completing this application, i am sitting in a hospital room waiting for my sister to wake up. Im waiting for her to open her eyes so i can nag at her to get some breakfast because that head ache of hers is only going to get worse if she doesn't eat something. I'm waiting to tell her that just because her legs don't work doesn't mean she can just lie in bed all day. I know she is going through a really hard time right now because at 15 years old she was unlucky enough to be diagnosed with something most people haven't heard of. Approximately 1,400 new cases of transverse myelitis are diagnosed each year in the United States and my little sister was just one. As i wait i think about the irony of the situation. I absolutely love hospitals.