The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
- Robert Frost
I have loved this poem for as long as I can remember. I even loved it before I fully understood what it meant. I got the idea that someone had to make a decision but never got that it was a metaphore about our journey through life.
It got me thinking about my career, although my entire career has been more about finding roads I never knew existed. My entry into the medical field was because a friend of my then-husband had a job in a nursing home that she didn't want anymore and was willing to let me take it. I fucked up on this job more than I can tell you. I was deservedly fired after about a year of them putting up with my incompetence, but what I learned from that job was that I am passionate about medicine. If it weren't for that job, I never would have known that.
At least it gave me a direction to follow. My next job was because my then-husband was friends with someone on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood. They had created a position for an outreach coordinator and I was chosen because a few other people on the board knew my then-husband and I got the job because of politics, even though I was nowhere near qualified and none of the people who chose me for the job had even met me.
I did very well with that job and was able to stick with my passion for medicine. That job came to an end because then-president Ronald Reagan cut funding for family planning programs and my job didn't fit into their budget anymore. Since then, family planning spending has been a political football, most recently with President Obama reversing former president Bush's policy of stopping funding to countries that counsel abortion or family planning.
That Obama! What a rascal.
After my family planning job ended a friend of mine told me of a job at the hospital (and I say "the hospital" because there was only one hospital in our town) in her department. The job was transporting patients to X-ray and back, but hey, it was a job. She told me to stop by and fill out an application and put her name down as a referral. A few days later I was out going to garage sales with my then two-year-old daughter in tow. In between garage sales I dropped by the hospital and filled out the application. I handed it to the receptionist. She glanced at it and said "would you wait here for a moment please?"
Sure. Why not. I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, dandling a toddler on my hip. Seconds later the president of human resources came to the desk and asked me to follow him to his office. I said "um, I can come back some other time when I have a sitter." I was thinking I'd like to go home and shower, do my hair, maybe put on some make-up. He said "no that's okay. Come on back." So I followed him to his office and he interviewed me then and there.
Long story short, because of my background working at Planned Parenthood and a piddly six-week course in medical terminology I had taken a couple of years prior, they gave me a job in medical records. Who knew medical records even existed?
It turns out that the government does. The other day I was reading Time Magazine and noticed that part of the stimulus package contains funding to digitize medical records and I smacked myself in the forehead.
Back when I was working in medical records I started working towards a degree in medical records administration, although nowadays they call it health information. I was taking a correspondence course, but found out that to sit for the credentialling exam there was a butt-load of college courses I needed first. That meant that once I finished the correspondence course I would still need about three years of college anyway, so I decided to drop the course temporarily, get the college courses out of the way, then pick up the correspondence course later.
That was 23 years ago.
Many, many roads-not-taken later I'm a dialysis nurse. Again, it really was a job I fell into and not a conscious choice that I made. I love my job, really, really, REALLY love my job, but I'm already thinking about the next step in my career. I'm taking courses toward a bachelor's degree in - ANYTHING. I haven't decided, but I think that a degree in anything other than nursing would be more of a benefit since, like everything else I've done, I got into nursing sort of by accident. If I can't be a dialysis nurse I don't want to be any other kind of nurse, so I don't see the point in getting a degree in something that I don't want to do for the rest of my life. To me, nursing is something to do to make money while I do what I really want to do..........whatever that is.
I spend a lot of time daydreaming about it. Sometimes I get ideas for cartoons that would explain renal failure. I picture a sexy, gamine water molecule with a big, fat, stupid looking glucose molecule hanging onto it, ripping huge holes in nephrons, and I think my idea is way more interesting than anything else I can find on the subject. But to do that, should I get a degree in graphic design or something? How would I get it published and distributed? I can doodle, but I can't really do design or graphics, and if I were to do this I'd want to do a professional job.
Then someone told me that the hot, new healthcare degree is in healthcare administration but what they didn't tell me is that this is a master's degree, not a bachelor's degree. I'm not all that keen about starting a new career when I'm 60. Besides working in healthcare administration means selling your soul to the devil first, then throwing some perfectly good nurses under the bus so you can keep the board of directors happy. Sorry, but the little bit of my soul I have left has to be preserved for teaching my grandchildren about life.
Then there are a zillion other things that interest me. English, anthropology, history, art - all those degress that for most people lead to a career where you get to say "would you like fries with that?". Since I have nursing as a fall-back position, I feel I can take risks and do something I love.
So finding out that there is money out there for medical records upgrades got me thinking though. How would it be if I were to go back and pick up the medical records thing again? The thing I love about medical records is that it means dealing with information and not people. It requires attention to detail, so a big nit-picker like me finds this extremely fullfilling. Heck, there's even this career field called healthcare infomatics and they even have their own magazine and everything. I could draw from the teensy bit of programming education I got and maybe go on with it.
I hate it that I didn't already have the degree before Obama was elected. It would have been so great to already be there when the money arrived. But hey, that's life. I fell into great job after great job, so I can cut myself a break for not actually being ready to take advantage of a real opportunity. The lesson in this for me is to get a degree in anything and the opportunities will be there. Just like my piddly little medical records class opened a door, a degree would open even more of them.
For now I just need to stay focused on getting through the class I'm taking now. My goal was to take classes now because I can study at work, and to try and keep my schoolwork from interfering in my personal life. Then the other day J said something about "why don't you take more than one class so you can get through faster." I was glad to know that she's supportive of me getting more education even if it means cutting into our time together a little bit.
A degree in medical records with a background in nursing a little bit of computer skills will take me a long way. Who know what will happen to the field with all the stimulus money being given to it. I may or may not be able to take advantage of it. Who knows? I do know I don't want another 23 years to go by before I get my answer.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
- Robert Frost
I have loved this poem for as long as I can remember. I even loved it before I fully understood what it meant. I got the idea that someone had to make a decision but never got that it was a metaphore about our journey through life.
It got me thinking about my career, although my entire career has been more about finding roads I never knew existed. My entry into the medical field was because a friend of my then-husband had a job in a nursing home that she didn't want anymore and was willing to let me take it. I fucked up on this job more than I can tell you. I was deservedly fired after about a year of them putting up with my incompetence, but what I learned from that job was that I am passionate about medicine. If it weren't for that job, I never would have known that.
At least it gave me a direction to follow. My next job was because my then-husband was friends with someone on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood. They had created a position for an outreach coordinator and I was chosen because a few other people on the board knew my then-husband and I got the job because of politics, even though I was nowhere near qualified and none of the people who chose me for the job had even met me.
I did very well with that job and was able to stick with my passion for medicine. That job came to an end because then-president Ronald Reagan cut funding for family planning programs and my job didn't fit into their budget anymore. Since then, family planning spending has been a political football, most recently with President Obama reversing former president Bush's policy of stopping funding to countries that counsel abortion or family planning.
That Obama! What a rascal.
After my family planning job ended a friend of mine told me of a job at the hospital (and I say "the hospital" because there was only one hospital in our town) in her department. The job was transporting patients to X-ray and back, but hey, it was a job. She told me to stop by and fill out an application and put her name down as a referral. A few days later I was out going to garage sales with my then two-year-old daughter in tow. In between garage sales I dropped by the hospital and filled out the application. I handed it to the receptionist. She glanced at it and said "would you wait here for a moment please?"
Sure. Why not. I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, dandling a toddler on my hip. Seconds later the president of human resources came to the desk and asked me to follow him to his office. I said "um, I can come back some other time when I have a sitter." I was thinking I'd like to go home and shower, do my hair, maybe put on some make-up. He said "no that's okay. Come on back." So I followed him to his office and he interviewed me then and there.
Long story short, because of my background working at Planned Parenthood and a piddly six-week course in medical terminology I had taken a couple of years prior, they gave me a job in medical records. Who knew medical records even existed?
It turns out that the government does. The other day I was reading Time Magazine and noticed that part of the stimulus package contains funding to digitize medical records and I smacked myself in the forehead.
Back when I was working in medical records I started working towards a degree in medical records administration, although nowadays they call it health information. I was taking a correspondence course, but found out that to sit for the credentialling exam there was a butt-load of college courses I needed first. That meant that once I finished the correspondence course I would still need about three years of college anyway, so I decided to drop the course temporarily, get the college courses out of the way, then pick up the correspondence course later.
That was 23 years ago.
Many, many roads-not-taken later I'm a dialysis nurse. Again, it really was a job I fell into and not a conscious choice that I made. I love my job, really, really, REALLY love my job, but I'm already thinking about the next step in my career. I'm taking courses toward a bachelor's degree in - ANYTHING. I haven't decided, but I think that a degree in anything other than nursing would be more of a benefit since, like everything else I've done, I got into nursing sort of by accident. If I can't be a dialysis nurse I don't want to be any other kind of nurse, so I don't see the point in getting a degree in something that I don't want to do for the rest of my life. To me, nursing is something to do to make money while I do what I really want to do..........whatever that is.
I spend a lot of time daydreaming about it. Sometimes I get ideas for cartoons that would explain renal failure. I picture a sexy, gamine water molecule with a big, fat, stupid looking glucose molecule hanging onto it, ripping huge holes in nephrons, and I think my idea is way more interesting than anything else I can find on the subject. But to do that, should I get a degree in graphic design or something? How would I get it published and distributed? I can doodle, but I can't really do design or graphics, and if I were to do this I'd want to do a professional job.
Then someone told me that the hot, new healthcare degree is in healthcare administration but what they didn't tell me is that this is a master's degree, not a bachelor's degree. I'm not all that keen about starting a new career when I'm 60. Besides working in healthcare administration means selling your soul to the devil first, then throwing some perfectly good nurses under the bus so you can keep the board of directors happy. Sorry, but the little bit of my soul I have left has to be preserved for teaching my grandchildren about life.
Then there are a zillion other things that interest me. English, anthropology, history, art - all those degress that for most people lead to a career where you get to say "would you like fries with that?". Since I have nursing as a fall-back position, I feel I can take risks and do something I love.
So finding out that there is money out there for medical records upgrades got me thinking though. How would it be if I were to go back and pick up the medical records thing again? The thing I love about medical records is that it means dealing with information and not people. It requires attention to detail, so a big nit-picker like me finds this extremely fullfilling. Heck, there's even this career field called healthcare infomatics and they even have their own magazine and everything. I could draw from the teensy bit of programming education I got and maybe go on with it.
I hate it that I didn't already have the degree before Obama was elected. It would have been so great to already be there when the money arrived. But hey, that's life. I fell into great job after great job, so I can cut myself a break for not actually being ready to take advantage of a real opportunity. The lesson in this for me is to get a degree in anything and the opportunities will be there. Just like my piddly little medical records class opened a door, a degree would open even more of them.
For now I just need to stay focused on getting through the class I'm taking now. My goal was to take classes now because I can study at work, and to try and keep my schoolwork from interfering in my personal life. Then the other day J said something about "why don't you take more than one class so you can get through faster." I was glad to know that she's supportive of me getting more education even if it means cutting into our time together a little bit.
A degree in medical records with a background in nursing a little bit of computer skills will take me a long way. Who know what will happen to the field with all the stimulus money being given to it. I may or may not be able to take advantage of it. Who knows? I do know I don't want another 23 years to go by before I get my answer.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.