Train of thought...

Today we made a trip to Antigonish to use the gift cards we got for Christmas at the book store there. It's a bit of a drive to get there...an hour or so on the highway. We've made this trip many times before and today as my mind started to wander as I watched the waves lapping the cold and icy ocean shore I wondered how many more times we would travel this highway. I am going to miss living in Nova Scotia once we finally sell our house and move back to Ontario.

Then I thought, what will I do in Ontario? I'd love to stay home as long as I can with our children. The cost of living is so much higher there and things are tight as it is. I will need to find work sooner or later - hopefully later, much later.

I started thinking that I would really like to work in the medical field, in a hospital or clinic perhaps. I have no experience or training in anything remotely medical. I have been thinking for a long time about becoming an ultrasound technician. I looked into this a year or so ago and learned that there are only a few schools that offer such a program and one is in the area where we are moving.

So, I thought about how I would go about such an endeavor. First, I want to and need to finish my MA in Sociology. Also, I will need to go back and find out what the pre-requisites are for the u/s/radiology tech program. I am hoping to finish up my MA and get the pre-req's for college and still be a SAHM.

I was really excited at the idea of being an u/s tech and wondered what kind of place I would work. Would I get to do a lot of pregnancy ultrasounds? How fun! But wait, maybe not so fun, right?? I have personally had more than one 'not fun' u/s. Could I really be the one to be the first to see and know that instead of a fetus there is a blighted ovum, or instead of a viable pregnancy there is nothing? I got really sad and started to tear up at the thought that u/s techs are sometimes called in to check babies that are near term...how would I handle being the first to see that baby's heart has stopped beating?

The day I found out that my second pregnancy was not viable and that my little baby had stopped developing at 8w6d (I was more than 10weeks along at that point) the regular u/s tech at our hospital was training a new tech. It was the young woman fresh from school who was at the controls in front of the magical, mystery screen and with the want on my little belly. She was the first to see that my baby had no heartbeat. I remember the room being so painfully silent. I was barely breathing. "Please tell me what you saw" I begged them both, but they said they weren't sure and couldn't say. Instead they just wheeled me off to talk to the ER Dr.

So, today as we drove along the highway that we'd driven a hundred times or more in the last 4 years, to the town where there is better shopping and restaurants and where the hospital is ...where twice we were heartbroken to learn that our babies stopped developing and twice we were blessed when I gave birth to our beautiful healthy children...I wondered how that young woman felt and what she was thinking that day at 10am staring at the screen and knowing she did not have good news to share. I hope that wasn't her fist day. I don't know that I could do that job and not cry and hug the woman who lay on the exam table. Maybe being an u/s tech isn't for me. Then I thought, maybe it is because I have been on both sides...

Then I spilled coffee all down the front of my coat and my train of thought was lost.