Ultrasound Off!

Well I had a whole other life before I was a writer. Before I got so sick with my bipolar. Before I was a stalker! Before I was a felon...I was an ultrasound tech in my twenties! Graduated school and everything!  It was great opportunity for me. I was 21 and living in Spokane with two years of college behind me in Montana...I was working at Starbucks and Hastings when I applied for a job at a large hospital. I said I would do anything there but that I was interested in Radiology. The next thing I knew I was a Radiology assistant!

Those were probably the best four years of my life outnin Washington. I thrived.  For two years I soaked up knowledge of Radiology like a sponge...then I started taking prerequisites for ultrasound school. Pre calc, physics and anatomy and physiology and physics. And writing!!! I got a B in writing. But other than that A's. I even got a 4.0 in anatomy one quarter! I was doing good! I got accepted into ultrasound school and sponsored by a Radiology group for $24000. They gave me $1000 a month to live off of for two years and I was supposed to work for them for two years after I graduated. That didn't end up working out in the end though. I think it was cause I just didn't fit in with the techs when I went there for my clinical...but that's a whole long story.

After school I moved back to Montana. I met a guy. I moved to a small town in Wyoming called Gillette..."Razor City."  I got a job at their local hospital and became the lead ultrasound tech. I lasted three months. The guy I moved down there for had dumped me two days later. He said you just needed a change??? I met up with some bad people and dabbled in drugs. Very unfortunate.

So I went back to Washington. I cried out to my dean and she said the only way I could take my registry test is if I went to treatment. This started the worst year of my life. 2005. Shit it wasn't bad! I was thrown into a whole new world. Lots of meth heads. I lived in a halfway house after treatment. The gals hated me! Then I was robbed by a roommate. A computer with all my pictures from the past five years was stolen.

I moved back to Montana on the bus...my car had been repossessed in Gillette.  A few months later I got a job at the Billings Clinic...but I was drinking again. That lasted a month.
Messing up a lot on exams. I was let go. I gave up right on the spot there...just said I was no good at it.

I guess it took my classmates about four years to be comfortable with their careers. What a shame! It pays $35 dollars an hour or so. Dang!  I've thought of sitting for the test because I never did it. I don't think I could handle the pressure of it, but I just want to pass the test! Fourteen years later, right? It's such a regret.

So yes there was a time when I was very well and very driven...ions ago!!'

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