Help me achieve my dream ✨

Hi Everyone ! My name is Courtney, I’m a 23 year old Student Nurse living in Coventry, studying in Liverpool. First of all, I want to say thank you for taking the time to read my story!

For those of you that don’t already know me, I started my Nursing training in 2019, and let’s just say it’s not been an easy ride! First of all, there was Covid, which took so much from so many of us. Around that time, I was also diagnosed with multiple long term complex health conditions, including Ehler’s Danlos syndrome, Intestinal failure, and Gastroparesis. This means I spend a lot of my time in and out of hospital, and rely on TPN (a source of nutrition, fed directly into my heart via a central line) to survive. This means my daily life looks a lot different to most people, and each day brings its own challenges.

As you can imagine, this has made my training far from a walk in the park. Becoming a Children’s Nurse is my greatest ambition and I am more determined than ever to make this happen. Knowing how much the kindness of a stranger looking after you when you’re at your most vulnerable in hospital, can impact your experience and wellbeing so much, makes this so important to me. To be able to make a difference, however big or small, to a child in hospital, is what keeps me going.

To be able to qualify, I still have around 3 months worth of placement hours to complete. Due to delays in this, because of my health challenges, it has meant I am now an ‘external student’ which unfortunately means that I do not qualify for any accommodation or financial support.

Recently, things were looking up for me, and I had a placement where I was able to complete all my hours, and a job lined up for when I qualified. This all came crashing down when I ended up suddenly unwell in hospital, needing emergency surgery. I had an ileostomy, and now live with a stoma, which has been an incredibly hard adjustment. At this time, my placement took away my job offer and any hope of completing my hours there. This now means I need to go back to Liverpool, where university can hopefully find me a place to complete these remaining hours.

Here’s the catch, this is something I am going to have to fund entirely by myself. As you can imagine, this is going to be extremely difficult for me to manage and afford. So any financial help, big or small, would mean more to me than I could ever put into words. To be able to qualify as a Children’s Nurse, something that I’ve been working tirelessly towards for 6 years, is within touching distance and I’m determined to not let this final hurdle stop me after everything that I have faced and overcome up until this point. The only thing that stands in the way of this is 500 hours of placement.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to read my story and for your generosity and kindness.