I am a Nurse...Sort of

What did you want to be when you grew up? I can remember when I was a young girl and I wanted to be a nurse. I'm pretty sure that every girl in my class wanted to be a nurse or a teacher, probably because we looked up to our teachers so much and because we got to tour the hospital for school and put on nurses caps and use all the cool instruments! I never had the desire to be a teacher and that is still true for me today, but I never went into the nursing field either--at least not officially!

It's been almost 12 years ago that I was diagnosed with my Crohn's Disease and I'm thankful that with the help of Remicade IV infusions, my disease is in remission! But, having a chronic illness that is immune sytem related (Crohn's causes my body to attack itself), it has brought on other "issues" such as psoriosis and an immune deficiency disorder that has to be treated with medicine also. My Remicade infusions have to be given in a vein every 10 weeks and I get to go spend 6 hours at the hospital for that. However, I've begun a new adventure with my immune deficiency treatments--I now do it at home instead of going to the doctor's office every 4 weeks. (See above photo taken in my living room)

Instead of trying to fit another doctor's office visit into my life (which would take 3 hours) and leave all the kids with my husband, I took the home infusion route and it's not too bad. An infusion company sends all the supplies to me at the beginning of the month and each week I draw up the medicine, stick 4 little tiny needles in my stomach, put the syringe in a pump and let it do its thing for an hour. I'm actually "infusing" myself as I type this!

The infusion nurse that came to our house to teach me how to do this was very impressed at how fast I caught on and how well I did with all of it. I guess that is because I've watched many nurses do similiar things in front of me for so many years that I just learned from watching them. Before I was diagnosed with my Crohn's Disease, I had a catheter in my chest for meds and a feeding tube and I had to eventually learn how to draw up the meds for that also. (That catheter was eventually taken out after my diagnosis and once I could eat again without pain.)

This is definitely a new adventure for me and most likely a lifelong one at that. So, I guess you could say that my childhood dream of becoming a nurse has come true--I am my own nurse. Too bad I don't get paid a nurse's salary!