The Painful Start

Here is the guy who started me down this path. When he was just a few months old he was covered with eczema. Covered. We had to keep socks on his hands 24-7 so he wouldn’t make himself bleed by scratching. As a nurse and “crunchy, tree-hugger” I thought I was already doing what I could, but it clearly wasn’t enough. My son’s itching was a mystery. I needed to learn and grow so I could improve his health and wellbeing.

A Career in Nursing

Let me back up. From the time I was little, I knew I would be in a helping profession. The possibilities varied (nurse, physical therapist, veterinarian, etc) but I always came back to nursing. In college, I faced the challenge many of us did: pick your life. Ok, so you don’t have to pick your life, but when you’re shelling out tons of money for a Bachelors degree from a private college you don’t want to pick the wrong career!

At the core of the nursing process is “holistic, patient-focused care.” Nurses recognize that a person is more than a physical being. One of the papers I wrote my freshman year focused on the person as a three-legged stool. Body. Spirit. Mind. Three legs. Same stool. If any of those legs is weak, the stool falters and cannot function. It is the same with a person. Each of us must care for our body, spirit, and mind.

 

Body. Spirit. Mind.

One of the papers I wrote my freshman year focused on the person as a three-legged stool. Body. Spirit. Mind. Three legs. Same stool. If any of those legs is weak, the stool falters and cannot function.

After college, I dove into my nursing career. I worked on a Medical/Surgical floor for a year. My goal for each shift was to leave each patient better off because I had been their nurse. After that, I drove to Alaska and worked for three years in a facility where the nurses did it all: ER, Clinic, OB (yikes!), Observation, Radiology, 911-dispatcher, and even the kitchen staff! Even more amazing than everything in that sentence, the nurses were encouraged to look at the whole person. We were there to pray with our patients. We read the Bible with them. This gave me a vision for what I wanted later in my nursing career. I would meet people where they were in life, see them as a whole, and work with each person to create positive change and even out that three-legged stool.

I would meet people where they were in life, see them as a whole, and work with each person to create positive change and even out that three-legged stool.

Natural Mama

Every mother tries her best to determine the healthiest and safest way to raise her kids. For me, this was a natural lifestyle; I breastfed all our kids, decreased chemicals in the house, made some (but not all) of our baby food, and ensured everyone old enough to eat food was taking a multivitamin and fish-oil.

Whole Health

Now we are back to the beginning of this post. Even though I was a nurse and mom who had been trying to do everything “right” for years I still couldn’t fix my son; I didn’t know enough. I had a baby covered from head-to-toe with itchy eczema.