The Path of Respiratory Therapy
Introduction
About a year ago, I came home from work one night and walked into the kitchen to where my mother was standing. There was a feeling of uneasiness and the panic began to clench my stomach. She looked so sad, so stressed; maybe it was the frizzy hair, the bags beneath her eyes, the way her back slouched in a low negative curve, or her eyes. Her eyes looked at me before she turned them away, but in that fragment of a second, it’s almost like I could look inside her narrow eyes and search until I would come upon this thing. This thing has no name, but it scares her. She wouldn’t exactly explain to me what it was but I felt the sudden movements of uncertainty with the way she shifted her body and tilted her gaze away from mine. It’s almost like I started to feel scared too. The expression that was set on her face gave me such a feeling that went straight to my heart. My mother sat down with me that night and explained that her sickness had become idiopathic, meaning that it was created from an unknown cause. The malfunctions that inhabit her body are respiratory related and deals with her lungs. Every week, she attends respiratory therapy and completes several breathing treatments. The therapists who have taken care of her, year after year, have set a positive influence and have created a better outlook for her. I have been inspired to become a respiratory therapist to help patients, like my mother, who suffer from breathing complications. My overall goal is to give people the opportunity to experience their lives as long as possible. Setting a positive outlook for others will help build a base for patients to be happy once again. Respiratory therapy is extremely popular with the amount of people who are diagnosed with breathing disorders every year. From 2010-2020, employment is expected to grow by 28 percent (“Occupational Outlook Handbook”). This is faster than the average growth for all careers. Thousands of
Introduction
About a year ago, I came home from work one night and walked into the kitchen to where my mother was standing. There was a feeling of uneasiness and the panic began to clench my stomach. She looked so sad, so stressed; maybe it was the frizzy hair, the bags beneath her eyes, the way her back slouched in a low negative curve, or her eyes. Her eyes looked at me before she turned them away, but in that fragment of a second, it’s almost like I could look inside her narrow eyes and search until I would come upon this thing. This thing has no name, but it scares her. She wouldn’t exactly explain to me what it was but I felt the sudden movements of uncertainty with the way she shifted her body and tilted her gaze away from mine. It’s almost like I started to feel scared too. The expression that was set on her face gave me such a feeling that went straight to my heart. My mother sat down with me that night and explained that her sickness had become idiopathic, meaning that it was created from an unknown cause. The malfunctions that inhabit her body are respiratory related and deals with her lungs. Every week, she attends respiratory therapy and completes several breathing treatments. The therapists who have taken care of her, year after year, have set a positive influence and have created a better outlook for her. I have been inspired to become a respiratory therapist to help patients, like my mother, who suffer from breathing complications. My overall goal is to give people the opportunity to experience their lives as long as possible. Setting a positive outlook for others will help build a base for patients to be happy once again. Respiratory therapy is extremely popular with the amount of people who are diagnosed with breathing disorders every year. From 2010-2020, employment is expected to grow by 28 percent (“Occupational Outlook Handbook”). This is faster than the average growth for all careers. Thousands of