operation
iStock

First Person

The Cure for a Sick Career?

Posted February 12, 2009

Here’s something we haven’t mentioned before: Whiner-in-Chief faints at blood tests. Not all blood tests. Sometimes she just tells nurses that she’s the type of person who faints at blood tests. Then she looks in a different direction, the nurse is extra-gentle, and they have a conversation about something completely irrelevant like how many children do you think Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will have by this time next year?

Sometimes, though, the nurse says, “I’m going to switch to your other arm because I can’t find your vein.” When that happens, it’s only a matter of time.

Whiner-in-Chief once fainted at a glaucoma test. But that was a really stupid thing to do. Now she just mentions that fact to eye doctors and they give her a lot of positive encouragement during her annual eye exams. She usually doesn’t even feel whoozy, unless they do one of those creepy tests where they inject dye so that they can examine what’s going on in all the really hard-to-see areas.

Okay. W-i-C got a little light-headed thinking about that dye. But she paused for a quick cup of tea and she feels much better now.

Since we’re bringing all the skeletons out of closet, this is as good a time as any to mention that Whiner-in-Chief once fainted during an interview with a dentist.

Here’s what happened: W-i-C was on assignment writing an investigative article about TMJ Syndrome, a chronic pain condition that supposedly has something or other to do with your jaw being out of whack. The dentist told W-i-C that her jaw was out of whack.

W-i-C denied that.

The dentist said that he would prove it to Whiner-in-Chief by demonstrating to her that she was more susceptible to certain kinds of pain than others. In retrospect, W-i-C doesn’t know if she fainted just at the thought of being susceptible to certain kinds of pain, or if it was the pain itself that caused her to pass out. Needless to say, she ended up on the floor of that dentist’s office.

We’d like to emphasize one thing: Whiner-in-Chief has never fainted during a dental checkup and she never intends to.

You might wonder how all of this connects to EconoWhining.

It’s simple. As we watched the U.S.’s unemployment rate climb from 7.2% to 7.6% in January, we’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about career alternatives. It might just be time to make a switch. After all, as we’ve mentioned before, we suspect that journalists are an endangered species. We’re losing faith in the stimulus package. And there are only so many canned-tuna dinners that even we can contemplate.

This brings us to our unfortunate tendency to faint in medical situations. It’s a crying shame, because the health-care sector seems to be the only real shelter in the global economic storm. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health-care employment increased by 19,000 last month. On average, the sector saw 30,000 job gains every single month during 2008.

That almost sounds too good to be true. We’re motivated. We’re really motivated.

And we think we’ve come up with a strategy that might help overcome this unfortunate tendency to faint at the most inopportune moments. Whiner-in-Chief plans to watch reruns of House without hiding her eyes, except during those times when she absolutely, positively needs to.

We will confess that Whiner-in-Chief once almost fainted when Offspring #2 had a wart removed.

But that was a long time ago. If W-i-C went back to school because she wanted to work in a growth industry, well, she wouldn’t have much choice, because there’s only one growth industry to choose between. Maybe she could specialize in giving blood tests to people who aren’t afraid of getting them.

The Whiner wants to know: Do you ever think about changing careers? Have you done it?

Reader Comments

  1. Nano

    LOL! I have similar phobias! But I was able to successfully run several wellness programs that had to do with needles. You just let the nurses do their jobs, and you do the rest. When the shots begin, you leave the room.

  2. Bruce Coulson

    I’ve never had a ‘career’. But I have had multiple types of jobs, including local delivery, long-haul truck delivery, customer service/phone answerer, lawn care guy, dock worker, garbage man, and standardized patient. Most of these changes were forced upon me through loss of prior work.

    I’d go with long-term health care, i.e. nursing homes. That is also a growth industry, and you wouldn’t have to take blood.

  3. Rose

    I have changed “careers” so many times it isn’t even funny.
    Usually, I did the changing, looking for something that would let me do my own writing in my down time.

    Some great jobs, some lousy jobs. But I’ve only been on unemployment for two short stints. Currently I’m self emplyed, but the work is editorial and I expect it to dry up. Then, who knows? Maybe some kind of in-home care for the elderly, have actually thought about looking into that.

  4. Crayon

    WIC, how did you not faint from the Graphic used with “We’re Bleeding”?

    I got a degree in Fine Arts in the ’70’s and then went straight to work as a secretary. I worked in medical as well as accounting offices doing secretarial work. I was Administrative Secretary to the Top Nun of a Catholic hospital and looked into a medical career at that time. Absolutely, the field is always hiring. They still play games with medical workers’ benefits, shifts and salaries so it’s not as stress free as it sounds. But if you have a lot of energy and like people and variety, it’s a great wide open field to train for because of the different specialties.

  5. Arlene

    Changed “careers?” Woo-hoo! Is there a character limit on these postings?

    I have retrained several times, relocated many times (husbands’ jobs required lots of moves), and always survived, at least until now.

    This time it really is different, and I think everyone can sense that. It feels like there are no actual jobs at the end of the monster.com, Twitter, and Facebook rainbow–it’s really all one big support group, but no one gets a regular place to go every day where they get paid on a regular basis. But everyone pretends anyway, because what’s the alternative to this ceaseless “networking”? Sitting at home rewriting your resume yet again?

    I’m with Bruce on long term care and rehab as a place to explore, though. That’s one niche over half of us will be exploring (as customers) if we live long enough. I bet this is one part of life where knowledge is power.

  6. abo gato

    I never wanted to have anything to do with a medical career, unless I could have gotten a job as a medical illustrator. That would have appealed to me when I got my art degree in the 70’s. **waves at Crayon** (clearly we were thinking about how to feed ourselves back then)

    But, boy oh boy, if I were a kid now I’d sure look at nursing or something like that. Nurses will always be needed and it seems as if there are many different directions you could go with that degree.

    I’m the true dinosaur here. I have worked for the same company now for 31 years. I really, really hope I can hang on for another 4 years or so. That would put me at 60 and I think then I could make retirement work. But man, things are getting harder and harder and things do seem a little tenuous right now.

  7. amy

    (How is it the Whiner is so woozy? Seems to come from pretty sturdy stock.) Stay away from sick people. Sick and poor, very bad combination. Not joking. Hospital jobs are absolutely last on my list and I’d contemplate staying unemployed first. Not worth the health risks unless you’re up at the top of the ladder, and even then, unless it’s a calling, questionable.

    Also, I don’t know whether you noticed, but some years ago we passed an ag bill establishing a means of getting guest workers in here. As you lot age the wages for medical jobs will drop like a rock and we’ll be importing our nurses and techs wholesale. I try to warn single mothers who’re going into hock for nursing degrees.

  8. Crayon

    Abo,

    Reality bit hard, didn’t even get a chance to pass Go and went straight to waitressing and secretarial work as you said, to “feed” myself and pay the bills after graduation.

    I had a photographer friend that went into “medical” photography…… but medical illustration seemed too tedious, drawing all those red and blue veins and muscle layers pulled back to bone while hunched over a drawing board…. (sorry WIC, avert your eyes). I hope you can hang onto your job AG to the finish line!

    Arlene’s take on the present is the scary one, that these jobs are just not going to re materialize and the resumes are going out into this big echo chamber. I worry that HH’s tech gigs are going to be blindsided by open sourcing and outsourcing and then it’ll be time to rise from the ashes for yet one more time and do God only knows what. He’s gone through those “What color is your dream job/follow your inner muse and the money will come” seminars too. What makes this recession so hard is that you can’t sell your house, if you have one, very easily to move to a better job market.

    Off the subject: Has any one else noticed all those “one rule to a flat stomach” ads all over the web? I see them constantly.

  9. Sarah

    I feel you Whiner – I once fainted after giving blood at the doctor’s office. I lay down and they gave me some juice; when I felt better, I went to the elevator and passed out again just as the elevator doors were opening – unnecessarily freaking out the innocent people in the elevator. I kind of spun around on my feet instead of just dropping to the ground, almost flew right over the railing (I was on the second floor), and slammed my head against a metal mailbox that was hanging next to the doctor’s office door. Then I think I fell to the ground and they made me take an ambulance to the emergency room, which was literally across the street. And I was perfectly fine of course – just had a bruise on the noggin. I think that fainting episode ended up costing a lot of money – fortunately I was a teenager at the time so I left my mom to foot the bill. Ah, youth.

    Sidebar: to anyone interested in entering the medical field who is looking for additional training, there is a lot of federal money (and perhaps other kinds of funds) out there that you can use to get trained and start a new career. Especially in medically underserved areas where there is such a shortage of quality care. Here is one place to look: http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/, but I’m sure there are others. Plus, you’d be, you know, saving people’s lives and whatnot, which is kinda cool too.

  10. Hope

    W-i-C, I feel your pain. In the 70’s, I was in a bachelor’s program to become a med tech. The first year was fine…basic bio, chemistry, electives, etc. The second year labs had us practicing needles on oranges in prep for practicing on one another. That’s the year I dropped out of school, and I didn’t return until the mid-80’s. In the interim, I had married and produced three kids, and I had a much better idea of who I am. My career hasn’t involved needles since.

    Ironically, though this shift to health care employment sounds positive to many, we have a nursing program at our local university that has a waiting list a mile long…they can’t train them fast enough.

  11. Nate

    I changed my career already and don’t have any intentions of changing again. I don’t like anything else other than what I already do.