As a daughter of a parent with mental health issues, it has shaped my world in a different way. As a little girl I had no clue what “mental health” problems were, but as I became a mom of my own daughter and saw my mom go through things that I had no clue about, it changed me. My mom was a young woman in the Army/ Air Force and she always told us about the good that the military gave her but she hid a lot of the bad things she went through. My mom was diagnosed with PTSD and Bipolar when she was in her late 50’s and it affected her a great deal. She worked as a clerk at the VA hospital near us and she was eligible to retire a little early. After she retired her mental state really took a turn for the worse. She drank more and although she was a recovering narcotics addict, she started to able a little more in that so it did not help her mental state. It made her aggressive towards my sister and I. My gather was still a toddle so I didn’t want her in that kind of environment so it forced me to have to move out of the home we were raising her in. After we all moved out my mom’s mental state was almost deadly. She drank herself into a coma and almost lost her life for it. It saddens me that her mental health gets in the way of having relationships with us, her children and with her grandchildren. My oldest daughter is 14 and she remembers she grandma use to pick her up from school and watch tv with her after school and take her out to lunch and do fun things but things are not the same anymore. I with that people took their mental health more serious because it doesn’t just affect them, it always affects their children and other family members. I do have a ether understanding of it because of the things that I went through so when I see other people going through this kind of thing I can take to them and try to guide them of how to help and be there for their loved one. Thank you for taking the time out and reading a small snippet of my life.

My name is Cierra and i am an 31 year old single mother or two girls and an LPN and student pursing a bachelors degree. Ever since I have become a nurse I’ve wanted to work in Oncology. When I was a teenager, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was so young and didn’t really know the extent of what was going on. But I remember when she started chemo, losing her hair and becoming so sick that she didn’t want to eat or even leave the house. My family came into town to help her raise my sister and I. Now that I look back at it, I realize that not all people have that same kind of dynamo when it comes to having family and friends that can drop what they’re doing to be by your side. As of now, I work with the elderly population and I see so many of my residents/ patients that go through hardships and don’t have a lot of family by their side or anyone they can call. It makes me want to be there for them. I know I can’t do much for them because of certain laws but I love to sit and be an ear for them whenever I can. Since my mom had breast cancer, her twin sister has had it twice. She opted to have a double mastectomy and I saw how it changed the way she looked at herself but she said “I knew it needed to be done”. She didn’t want to take a chance for the breast cancer t return. Now my eldest aunt just got diagnosed with it as well. She has started the chemo therapy process and my grandmother is there helping her until they know more. All of these events have made me think more about where I want to take my career and education when I am done with school. Oncology has been on my mind and heart over the last few years. This school year I will have an opportunity to have a clinical session on an oncology unit at the school I am at, so I’d like to see where it takes me. When it comes to breast cancer and dementia, I have so much experience with it. Not only is it because I work in the elderly population, but because in 2017, while i was in school for my LPN, my mom was diagnosed with early onset dementia. Most of the time people don’t think she has it because she can carry a conversation pretty well, but then she does things like repeats herself or ask you questions that you’ve answered two or three times. She keeps notepad next to her bed and couch so that she can write things down so she doesn’t forget them. It saddens me that my mom is only 63 and has had all these health issues go on. But I know she isn’t the only one in the world. I now that there s someone out there that can relate to me and I know I’m not alone. Now that I am an adult, I’ve had so much time to think about all of these scenarios and what if it was me and my children? How would think affect my household? I know I would be on the opposite of my mo. I wouldn’t have the help she had. I’d be relying on my children to help me, and that’s just not fair to them. Another thing that has changed since I’ve been working it the elderly population for so long is my patience. I am more patient with them, and I encourage my aides and techs that wrk around me to be more patient. You never know what they’re going through and you never know when that will be you. Because, believe it or not, one day it will be us. A lot of times when I’m working, residents tell me “don’t get old, it’s no fun” and i giggle to them and say “I hope I make it to your age some day”. I laugh but I am serious. I have lost a sister, cousins and a plethora of friends to different things in life, so I pray I make it to 85 plus years old. These different events in my life have inspired me to focus more and want to expand my learning about breast cancer and dementia. On another note, strokes have not affected me or my family personally, but learn about them daily through my patient. I’ve had several patients that have gone in for a surgery and have had to be admitted to a long term care facility because they had a stroke while they were in surgery. Some of them bounce back with therapy and some of them become long term residents of a care facility. Just depends on the type of stroke and the severity. It can be hard on the families and especially hard on the person who had the stroke because it changes their life completely. It can affect the way they talk, eat, care for themselves as sometimes the way the family is able to care for them. I am grateful I have not had a family experience as such, but I am aware how much something like this can affect a family. I hope whomever this essay gets to is in an abundantly blessed and peaceful state of mind. Thank you for taking the time to read a little about my family and I. I am in dire need of help for school and I cannot pay for much of it out of pocket due to bills and needing to care for my kids. This economy is a disaster and I am in of all the help I can get. I don’t have any help from my family as they are in another state from me and they also have their own financial hardships. Thank you again.