How I Got Into Healthcare

I said I was going to post this awhile back and never did.

The way I got into healthcare is not a long story, but how I ended up doing what I'm doing and what I'm going to school for IS.

 

My father passed away at the age of 43 (a few days prior to his 44th birthday) due to colon cancer. I was 9. He had been diagnosed with cancer about 3 years prior. I don't know a lot of the specifics even to this day because it kills me to ask my mom about it and I end up bawling my eyes out for hours afterward. I don't know what stage he was diagnosed at, but he was given less than a year to survive at the time, so I'd probably say Stage 3.
Ever since, I wanted to be able to do something to stop others from suffering in that way. And not just the patients with cancer, but their families and friends as well.
In elementary school, when all kids have the various ideas of what they want to do when they grow up, I had wanted to be everything from a teacher to an astronaut to a doctor. I stuck with doctor for awhile.
In middle school, before I knew much about cancer still, I had decided I wanted to do research and find a cure for cancer. Some kind of treatment that would kill the cancer.
In high school, I learned a little bit about cancer, and I was also involved in forensic science classes along with my many other science classes. At that point, I had flipped back into wanting to be a doctor, but more specifically a medical examiner.
I began my college career as an Undeclared major, switching in the first semester to Chemistry. Hah. After I completed my Calculus I class that first semester, I realized I did not have it in me to take all the way through Calc IV. So I switched to Forensic Science. It was still a fairly new major in my college at the time, and it seemed to combine Chemistry with Biology fairly seamlessly. That second semester of my freshman year, I took Intro to Forensic Science and kind of had my hopes dashed about that degree as well - I had wanted to work in the lab, more in the biological field rather than chemistry or fingerprint analysis or anything like that, and the professor had indicated that before too long, the department would be fairly automated and I felt I wouldn't have much of a job. However, I stayed in that major and enrolled in some more classes that would work in multiple degrees. One of them was Microbiology. In the fall of my sophomore year, I spent more time studying for one test in that class that I have studying for any other class in total, and I was genuinely intrigued with it. So, I went ahead and switched over to Biology.
From that point, I stayed a Biology major. We had a wide variety of science electives to choose from, as long as some of them fit into certain categories (ie: Animal Physiology or Human Physiology, x number of junior/senior level courses, etc). I stayed with a lot of human-focused classes...I took human anatomy, human physiology, pathogenic microbiology+immunology, virology, biology of cancer, etc. Biology of Cancer was when I finally figured out that they already had cancer drugs for many types of cancer that were fairly effective at killing cancerous cells, as long as the cancer was caught fairly early. I started applying for research jobs anyhow, hoping to get on with doing some kind of research that would benefit humans. I had a friend of a friend that told me to apply at their workplace, since I had a BS in Biology, and there should be plenty of openings.
And I got a job in the lab as a laboratory assistant. It was implied to me multiple times that I would be able to progress into a tech position, although when I started the job I had no idea what that really entailed. I worked there for a few months before realizing that that was what I really wanted to do. After getting impatient, I finally applied to a school for an associate's degree in laboratory science, however I strongly disliked how the program was set up and quit after a week. There were multiple schools in the state that offered a bachelor's program, so I started researching those, applying, and taking some prerequisites for them. Unfortunately/fortunately, I didn't have all of the prerequisites fully completed by the time I interviewed(which was last fall), and I feel that is the main reason I was not accepted. However, I found out about the school I'm currently attending not long after, and saw that I could apply by May and be accepted into the fall class. So, I applied, was accepted, and here I am! I have been offered a few opportunities to get trained on-the-job for a tech position, however it would take longer, be less comprehensive, and I would not be a fully-certified tech. So, I decided to do the school route, which will take a total of 3 semesters and have me be certified in 4 areas, versus on-the-job training, which would take a full year to just get certified in 1 area. It was also not absolutely guaranteed that I would get that training, it was just somewhat implied that in downtime from the job I would be accepting, that they would train me in a tech capacity. And I didn't want to take that risk.

I want to be able to help people. I don't feel as if I have the patience or personality to be a nurse or doctor, and lab stuff makes me extremely happy anyway. The fact that I could possibly save someone's life from one lab test is the type of thing that keeps me going.
Right now, I do love what I do. I love being able to help doctors make a diagnosis due to either helping them order the proper test, resulting it out, or simply preparing the specimen for analysis. But I want to be able to do more, and be more active in the process.