A Love-Hate Relationship
Ever since I was a little kid, I've wanted to help people. Whether it was something as simple helping my little sister tie her shoes or helping my mom cut out name tags for her students, I loved it. It's something that I've loved to do from a very young age and that love has only grown as I've gotten older. Science has also been something I've loved. Ever since I was a little girl I've wanted to be a nurse. I would get to learn about a topic I loved and help people while doing it!
Science has always been a major part of my life, but it really impacted me when I was diagnosed with a chronic auto-immune disease called Crohn's disease at 11. Now, science really took over my life. Learning what to do and what not to do when you have this disease, doing all the research I could to learn more about what it was and what I could do to try and stay healthy. Spending so much time in the hospital getting all these different tests done made me hate the hospital and everything that was related to it. I hated that they couldn't give me an answer as to why I was sick, when I started to get sick, and what I could do to make myself feel better. Being told you'll have to deal with this for the rest of your life was definitely frustrating for an 11 year old, but eventually, things got better.
As time went on, all the anger and hate that I had for science and disease in general dissipated. My symptoms got easier to manage and effected my everyday life less and less. I could still play sports, I could still hang out with friends, and I could still eat basically everything that I wanted to. My hospital stays made me want to do more for the science community. I wanted to help people like me who were sick and wanted answers. I wanted to give back to a community of doctors and nurses and researchers who had done so much to help me over the years. I wanted to help find cures for chronic diseases so that people in the future wouldn't go through the same thing I did. I saw my disease as a gift and not a burden. When my view changed, that's when I fell in love with science all over again.
Science has always been a major part of my life, but it really impacted me when I was diagnosed with a chronic auto-immune disease called Crohn's disease at 11. Now, science really took over my life. Learning what to do and what not to do when you have this disease, doing all the research I could to learn more about what it was and what I could do to try and stay healthy. Spending so much time in the hospital getting all these different tests done made me hate the hospital and everything that was related to it. I hated that they couldn't give me an answer as to why I was sick, when I started to get sick, and what I could do to make myself feel better. Being told you'll have to deal with this for the rest of your life was definitely frustrating for an 11 year old, but eventually, things got better.
As time went on, all the anger and hate that I had for science and disease in general dissipated. My symptoms got easier to manage and effected my everyday life less and less. I could still play sports, I could still hang out with friends, and I could still eat basically everything that I wanted to. My hospital stays made me want to do more for the science community. I wanted to help people like me who were sick and wanted answers. I wanted to give back to a community of doctors and nurses and researchers who had done so much to help me over the years. I wanted to help find cures for chronic diseases so that people in the future wouldn't go through the same thing I did. I saw my disease as a gift and not a burden. When my view changed, that's when I fell in love with science all over again.
Wow, that is crazy! If my life took a turn like that I would definitely start to ask questions like "why?" and "how?". I can really see why you wanted to study epidemiology now. That's a very noble reason to pursue science. I hope you can make a serious impact one day in the prevention of diseases, or maybe even cure a big one we have today.
ReplyDeleteI totally understand why you started questioning and directing all your anger towards science.I think its great how you learned to stay healthy. I think its amazing what you're trying to accomplish and i wish you the best of luck!
ReplyDeleteGreat first blog post Ryann! I think it would help people (your classmates too) to learn more about the disease. Maybe in another blog post you can talk a bit about what Crohn's disease is and how it is caused (or what is known about factors affecting it!). You can also include links to information pages from reliable sources (eg. Mayo Clinic, NIH, etc).
ReplyDeletePlease insert an image or two to go with your blog post to give it more visual appeal. Could be a nice photo of you, or anything else. If it's not your own photo, just make sure you cite the source. Keep up the good effort.