Out of Focus - the diary of a student radiographer.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Arse

(This is a fleeting visit to express my frustration at my useless self - normal silence will be resumed as soon as possible).

I hate that feeling that I get every few years that I'm doing the wrong job and something else would be so much more my sort of thing. Well, I've got it again and I haven't even started being a radiographer. Arse. I'm so fickle. Maybe it's the stress of upcoming exams and essay deadlines and I'll get over it in due course. Maybe.

The thing that did it was the placement I had on Friday observing on an ambulance. Now I want to be a paramedic. The novelty of this situation is that I've been here before. Back in 2001 I applied to be an ambulance technician and passed all the assessments except the fitness test. I was even offered a training place subject to passing the fitness test. I trained hard but my heart rate let me down. My resting heart rate was fine - even now with my far more sedentary lifestyle and increased weight it's about 70 which is average. But they measure your heart rate whilst going up and down steps whilst carrying 30kg and if it goes above 90% of your theoretical maximum, that's it. Fail. It didn't matter that I could physically complete the test without collapsing and the gym lady said my heart rate returned to normal really quickly which was the criteria *they* used to measure fitness.

For some reason my heart has always had a tendancy to run fast when exercising. At the gym, the exercise machines had heart monitors in and they were constantly telling me to slow down so my heart rate would come down a bit. Thing is, if I obeyed the gym machine I didn't feel like I was getting any real exercise. I guess I'm just weird.

Anyway, I kept trying. Then in 2002 I came down with a bad back and decided it was probably a good thing I hadn't got a job as an ambulance tech. My back is more or less fine now, but with the occasional twinge to remind me to look after it. So I got over wanting to be a paramedic.

So, despite my history of a dodgy back, my past failures at the fitness test, the fact that I haven't been near a gym in years, I weigh more now, I have trained 2 and a half years to be a radiographer, and there aren't any unis near me that run paramedic courses (techs are being phased out) - despite all this I now want to be a paramedic again.

Bah. My head is *so * messed up. Anyone know where I can get a fully functioning one from?