Fresh start.

It’s been two weeks since I made a decision I thought I’d never have to make.

My entire life, so to speak, has been centered around “what I would do when I grew up.” Easy. I would work at the family business and eventually the clinic one day. I would become a physical therapist and everything would just work out….

Until it didn’t. An occasional bad day turned into an occasional bad month that became a hard year. Being a physical therapist became more about paperwork and insurance regulations than about treating patients and the unrealistic expectations led to resentment of my beloved profession. You would’ve found me three years ago searching in medical journals or reading books to expand my knowledge base and pouring over new information to ensure my patients were getting the best course of treatment possible.

This year, you’ll find me in my office scouring over insurance denials and entering them on websites because no one wants to pay for anything. You’re likely to find me typing up letters justifying why the patient is in physical therapy or shaking my head wondering why the patient is in physical therapy when they’ve verbally expressed “ I don’t want to get better – I want my disability.”

There’s a cold, dark world to physical therapy that people don’t see, sadly. It has become a career that is regulated by insurance companies and by disability lawyers and it’s driving away the same therapists who desire so much to actually care for patients. It’s a hard truth to swallow that some people don’t want to get better!

My physical therapy career has recently made me bitter and cynical. It has left me feeling upset and unfulfilled. I read so many articles about this being a top career and I’m wondering where these people work. I throw a grand a month to a student loan I’m paying for a job I hate…..

And that’s my truth. I have prayed and cried and hoped that God would lead me on a different road and here I am, two weeks later, preparing to leave a job I planned my entire life around. My children are growing up around me and not before me and I’ve always wanted to be a mom. A real mom. Not the mom who puts her job first and her family second and sadly, that’s exactly what I’ve done. I can’t do that anymore.

I have three more months of working here before I officially clean out my desk of 8 years and say goodbye to so many patients and coworkers who have become like family to me. It isn’t this job, it’s the outpatient environment. I don’t know if my next job will be any better or any different, but I do know I need a change and a chance. I cannot sacrifice who I am as a person anymore and I need a life and my sanity back. I am not cut out for the outpatient world. A hard pill to swallow when that’s been your life plan. Nothing like waking up one morning and just knowing the path you’ve been on for twenty years is anything but what you’d imagined.

So, no, I am not running for board of education, but I am working for the board of education beginning in August. I am excited and nervous and am eager to feel like I am truly putting what I know to good use again. I don’t want to just be a “filler” or “someone people go to before they can get their MRI.” I am over that and I need purpose. I feel as though this job appeared to me because that is the prayer God answered. I feel this is exactly where I meant to go. This is what I need so I can love my career again.

Please keep me in your thoughts through this transition – I do not expect it to be easy. But hope – sometimes you just have to jump and hope there’s something there to catch you.