It was really just going off to college and being independent and then learning about my body. Once I learned about my body, and learned what I need to do just to stay healthy in terms of resting and you know, triggers that get me sick and not over doing it, things of that nature.
I felt like I proved a lot to myself. I mean, it felt good to prove everybody else wrong, but I was proving a lot to myself: that despite whatever circumstances you might have in your life you can still do what they say you can’t do.
By spring 2019, so January 2019, I’ll hopefully be back in grad school for a nurse practitioner. I want to be a pediatric hematologist nurse practitioner, to work around patients with sickle cell disease, specifically children with sickle cell disease, so I need to go back to nursing school. Hopefully I want to get into school back down in Atlanta or here in Chicago, wherever I can get in. Right now, I’m just taking it easy, getting on my feet.
So in terms of the opioid epidemic, to be honest, I feel it’s really harmful towards sickle cell patients, because of the new stipulations that the FDA is trying to put out in terms of limiting patients in terms of getting their medicine. We already face enough going to the hospital, trying to get opioids, so now we have this. And it didn’t become an epidemic, if I’m going to be honest, until it started [with] certain people of a certain race, if you want to go there.
