Can I be an RN > NP with a bad hip / knee / back?

MomAndSonInMD · May 2, 2016

Can I be an RN > NP with a bad hip / knee / back?

Some background about me to help answer the above question:

I'm an only-parent of a 2yo. (I say "only parent" vs single parent since the father is barely in the picture so there's no "going to dad's every other weekend and every other Wednesday" type of deal. It's me 100% of the time.) My son is my world and I want to optimize my time with him since he'll only be little once and will be grown and gone way too soon.
I'll be 40 next month.
My bachelor's is in an unrelated field.
When I was a teen deciding which college to attend and career to pursue, everyone in my family said they saw me as a doctor, but I shied away from the idea because I didn't like blood and didn't want to get attached to patients then lose them.
Fast forward 15 years, well after I was done with college, and I got a very strong urge to be in medicine but I wanted a family even more (yes, I know you can do both, but I couldn't see me personally doing medical school / residency, etc while also having what we already knew would be a very high risk pregnancy and a child with high odds of having special needs), so I suppressed my desire for medical school and focused on family.
The desire to be in medicine wouldn't go away, so I thought maybe nursing / NP would be a nice compromise so that became my new focus.
I've had a bad knee and back since I was a teen (the knee more so than the back).
When I also injured my hip ~2010, I was working full-time in my current field while doing pre-nursing at night. But the hip injury took me out of pre-nursing because, until I could walk, I couldn't be a nurse so my focus switched to getting myself better with lots of P/T to avoid surgery.
After the hip injury and P/T I was put on pregnancy bed rest. Now my son is 2yo and I'd like to return to work but I need to decide which path I'm taking my career, back to what I was doing before bed rest (which I'm very good at but find terribly boring), or going forward with medicine.

QUESTIONS:

How do I scratch this itch to be in medicine, but with a bad hip / knee at my age and with a child? Has anyone else done it?
What are the physical demands of clinicals to become an RN (and later NP)?
What are the daily physical demands of an RN (and later NP), say in a clinic vs hospital vs other setting?
My understanding is that I need to be an RN for at least 3 years before pursuing my NP. Is that correct? If so, would working in a clinic RN be less demanding on the hip/knee for those 3 years?
Once I'm an NP, is there as much standing as with being an RN? I was reading that 1/3 of the day of an NP is reviewing lab results and they have more autonomy over picking their hours than an RN.
What is the best way to begin this journey, considering my advanced age and physical limitations while optimizing time with my son since I'm an only parent? a. CNA>RN>NP, b. just go for RN at a community college and then to UofMD Nursing for NP, c. go straight to UofMD for RN and skip comm. college, or d. something else?

TYIA!