Freehold Woman Keeps Fighting For Her Dreams Despite Illness

FREEHOLD, NJ — Caryn Powers has days where her joints hurt so badly that functioning becomes nearly impossible.

The Freehold native, who works as a licensed practical nurse for Bayada Pediatric Home Care, has Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that affects not just her digestive tract but many other parts of her body.

Diagnosed with the disease at 16, she graduated from high school while being homeschooled, and has gone on to get her LPN. Her goal, however, is to become a registered nurse.

It's a challenge that has become greater as Powers has been in and out of the hospital due to flare-ups of the disease.

"For (Caryn), having Crohn’s has meant missing out on many life experiences while home schooled in high school," her mother, Janet, wrote in a post on the YouCaring site. "It means she missed out playing softball which she loved so much. It means she lost friends who did really understand when she suddenly went MIA because of a flare."

Powers, now 31, battles the disease daily and it has resulted in her missing work frequently and being forced to go on short-term disability more than five times, her mother wrote.

"Some might hear of Crohn's and associate it with a bathroom disease that causes some tummy pain. But for Caryn it has shaped her life in ways that most young adults never have to think about. Yet, she fights on and doesn’t give up, even on the hardest days she finds the strength to make a game plan," Janet Powers wrote.

Caryn Powers has been hospitalized many times over the last 15 years and been through "countless procedures, blood transfusions, infusions ... ( and) two surgeries requiring her to have parts of her intestines removed," her mother wrote. The family is hoping folks will help her out.

"She was 16 years old when she was diagnosed and since then her life has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Caryn is a very strong Jersey girl," Janet Powers wrote. "She absolutely loves her job and her adorable patients."

"She has had to fight harder and longer to achieve her dreams of being a nurse (LPN) but still has hopes of being a RN one day," her mother wrote. "THIS IS WHAT CROHN’S DISEASE REALLY LOOKS LIKE and she is Conquering it!"

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Photo provided by Caryn Powers