In life, no one wants to go to the hospital, but some of these children have no other choice. I want to make this experience for them at least an easier one. I have always loved children from mentoring at an elementary school while I was in high school to my best friend having a baby boy this past fall. Seeing her go through childbirth and all of the amazing nurses on her side made me want to be that person who can provide that kind of comfort to others. They say that when you go into peds you have to also deal with the parents, I look at it as if they are scared. They have their babies who are sick or who are in pain and they can not do anything about it. It is awful seeing your loved one in the hospital especially if it is someone that you gave birth to or someone that you are raising. I want to be able to not only make it a better experience for the little one but I also want to make it a better experience for the parent. I think that I would make an amazing pediatric nurse because I have always had a tie to little ones. I am an only child and I always wanted to be around little ones. However, I don't think that I want to work in a hospital where I have no connection with any of the patients. I want to be a home health pediatric nurse, I want to stay consistent. I want to have a connection to the patients and all of the families. I feel like having someone that the parents know coming every day to take care of their babies will make them feel more content with their baby being sick. I want to make parents trust me and come to me when they have a concern because if they are worried it is going to make the child worried and it is not going to help the situation. I want to make a sense of calm in the world of chaos. They believe in magic and the unknown and I want to keep them believing in the impossible and making it calmer for them. I want to keep them in their little mindset and not have to worry until it is in dier need to worry. I want to make a difference even if it is in one life.

I spent the first semester of my freshman year of college in the hospital. Hello my name is Karmen Autobee. I have always loved the medical field, when I was in high school I was able to be in a program called SEBS, which was the School of Engineering and Biomedical Sciences. I went through my journey trying to find what was the best fit for me before I went to college. Once I finished high school, I knew I wanted to be a nurse, so I applied to be in the nursing program at Colorado State University Pueblo. Then I started college and everything was going fine. Until I went into the hospital within 4 weeks of starting the semester. I went to the local hospital where they told me that I had two kidney stones that were between seven and eight millimeters wide. I was told that no one at that hospital was going to be able to help. So in all of the pain that I was in they gave me two doses of morphine and that didn't do anything for the pain, they continued increasing the doses until I had 2 doses of fentanyl before I was then flight for lifed and sent to Penrose Hospital. I spent a week there due to complications when I first got there and I had to go under and have a stint put in to try and relieve the pain and release the stones. While I was there I didn't have any way to get my schoolwork done so when I could come home I was very behind. I came back to school the following week, where I had a lot of makeup to do because I was failing all of my classes just because I couldn't get my schoolwork done. While I was here that week I ended up back in the hospital with multiple infections that I could not get rid of. I spent more days in the hospital with more tests although no one was able to figure out what was going on. In total, I was poked 33 times by people getting blood and putting in iv's. I am a very hard person to poke as is and so being poked that many times, my arms were bruised and red and sore. The nurses gave up on my arms and finally inserted a pic line to be able to push medication faster and have a place all the time. Seeing how hard it was for people to get a place made me want to try and make that easier for other people. When I came back to school I got all of my grades up and still managed to keep my GPA. I finished my first semester with a bang. This semester I am going to CSUP and a local community college which is where I am getting my phlebotomy license. I want to help other people not be so afraid of the doctors and the hospitals.