Devon Fowler knew from an early age that she wanted to help others as a nurse, but when she faced the challenge of raising a special needs child of her own, she found an even more profound way to care. “After Elle's diagnosis I had so much more compassion for parents that were raising a child with a disability,” Devon says. “I never knew how it felt to not be able to fix all of your child's problems until then. I never knew how hard physically and mentally it could be. Night after night your child isn’t sleeping because of their condition, and yet you have to run a home and hold down a full-time job. It is the hardest thing to do. I never realized that before.”
As a lifelong nurse, Devon loved home care. She had learned to love it when she was twelve and caring for her grandmother alongside the home health nurse who had been sent to help her grandmother manage both heart failure and diabetes. Devon would go on to spend years in various settings helping others until her own family’s needs led her to find a new focus caring for medically fragile children in their homes. “I knew that was my calling,” she remembers, “when I could allow a parent to go to work without worrying about their child.”
Today, at Aveanna, she uses her clinical skills and her personal experiences to give her patients and their families the care they need. “I’ve enjoyed every place I have ever worked as a nurse,” Devon says, “but now I feel like I am fulfilling my purpose in life.”