At the age of three, Carla Pease was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
According to Minot Daily News from Minot, North Dakota, her experiences with the nurses who took care of her made her want to become a nurse herself.
"I was never one of those kids that said I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer. I always knew I wanted to be a nurse," said Pease. "When I was three, I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and I spent a lot of time in the hospital having surgeries. The nurses were the ones who took care of me. I knew I wouldn’t be happy being anything other than a nurse."
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In addition to her cerebral palsy, Pease developed a condition called reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD) when she was 16. RSD attacks the nervous system after a surgery or some type of trauma.
Pease finished her LPN degree through the Dakota Nursing Program in July 2008, and she’ll finish her RN program this May. She hopes to get her masters in nursing, and she credits the help of the Dakota Nursing Program and the students in it for her success.
"Everybody in the Dakota Nursing Program was really wonderful. They didn’t wait to see me struggle with something. They always offered me help if I needed it. They never treated me any differently with my cerebral palsy. They never gave me the easy patient to take care of or anything. I never felt like I was a second-class nursing student because of my cerebral palsy," Pease said.
Despite overcoming drastic odds, Pease still has to be careful, but she is optimistic. "It has been brought to my attention that physically, nursing isn’t the best career for me to go into, but I would rather have 10 seconds of something meaningful than a lifetime of doing nothing special."
