Working When You Have IBS

I've been working in social services with emotionally disturbed kids for the past four years.  It's a bit stressful, but it's preparing me for medical school (hopefully starting in 2007).  When I have my bad days, my job is pretty understanding - we have sick leave bank, which means if you use up your sick leave and have a debilitating medical condition you can receive up to 200 hours of extra sick leave for the year.  It saved my arse last year when I had surgery and out-of-state hospital visits, etc.  Make sure when you get a new job they have good insurance and leave benefits!

If you have worked with disabled adults and are interested in nursing, you could try what my mother did for a while which was private duty nursing. She basically sat with old people (and occasionally severely handicapped children and adults) who had money enough to recieve nursing-home care at home. She didn't care for it much because it was really boring; she sat a lot and did a lot of cross stitch and watched t.v. But I daresay your giving up nursing is partly because of the time you have to spend on your feet; private duty is a lot of sitting. And because it's not demanding, you can be in the bathroom frequently if you need to, or curl up on the couch until you feel better. There may be some phsyical aspects, like turning a bed-ridden patient, but that may can be done by an aide; they usually come in and do the bathing and stuff, not the nurse.

Something with a bit more work involved, but less skills needed is sitting for adults who don't need a nurse, but do need someone to cook for them and do some light housekeeping, maybe run errands and take them to doctor appointments and make sure they take their medicine. I see ads in the paper all the time with people wanting someone to stay the day with a parent that's not ill enough for a nursing home, but doesn't really need to be cooking or driving either. That kind of job wouldn't come with benefits, unless you worked through some sort of placement company, but who better to understand your bowel problems than an old person? Lol. You can compare ailments!

The other place you can look at is to work with a senior citizen apartment complex or retirement community as an on-site nurse, activity coordinator, etc. My mother has even worked a desk job in a hospital working with the insurance companies to get people's hospital stays approved (called "pre-certing"). She also worked in a carpet factory handling worker's comp insurance claims and doing first-aid and taking people, when necessary, to the hospital. Have to be able to handle severed body parts to do that, though. But, anyways, there's a lot of nursing jobs out there that don't require a lot of standing or physical movement that would hurt your back. And the medical field is always a good place to be when you're chronically sick because everyone is much more understanding and old people will claim your poots as their own, LOL!