Job and Health Update

Week two of new job finished. It's hard to know where to start when writing about it because things are still kind of speculative / in the birthing stages. In other words, it's not simply a new location but more like a new business that's just getting off the ground. And along with that is figuring out exactly what is going to be happening on a daily basis and how things are going to happen. Especially when there are so few of us running the place. We're going to need a lot more staff (for specific things like medical billing, nursing assistants, sales, etc). But for now, it's the owner / doctor, head nurse, office manager, and me. And we're all considered consultants, as we're all going to be working with clients (mine will be in the weight management program). I guess during the past few days we've continued learning about more of the products we're going to be prescribing. One additional modality we covered yesterday was the ionic foot bath. It's basically a cleansing process in which the water interacts with a compound electric current that enables toxins to be released from your body. After your feet soak in it, the water turns different colors, each of which indicates a certain type of toxin being released.

Today we (one of the new hires and I) got to see our first appointment. A client with stomach cancer had come in a few times previously to start treatment. This afternoon he continued with another foot cleanse and a session on the bio-mat. He'll be coming in next week as well. We aren't booked with many appointments yet, although the goal is to eventually get booked up. But we have to be ready for that. For example, having the office set up – some of which got done today.

 

I haven't written about my own health updates since before my last post, but I might as well now. The first round of medicine I took (which I thought was going to be a magical cure as the industry makes it out to be) did nothing for me. I went searching for possible reasons it might not work and came upon some alternative medicines that purported to do the same thing. So my doc prescribed me another one. I'm a little more than halfway through that one, and I'm still not noticing any improvement. I'm really confused and concerned about this. And looking forward to making a follow-up appt in which I say, “okay, what is going on here?” The fact that I'm now working for an alternative health company has not escaped me, and it's sort of an option in my mind. But I guess I'll see what happens.

In thinking about the source of certain medical conditions like mine, psychology still enters the picture. I'm not saying that the condition itself is psychological in nature; it is truly a physical condition. But did a psychological condition lead to a physical manifestation? Again, we learned about that in the video we watched the first day of orientation. But it's interesting. For example, I think my mind controls how much energy I have sometimes. The more I have to do, the more energized I am and the less I have to do, the less energized I am. I think weight issues and GI problems are related. When you don't have a lot to do, your consciousness automatically goes inward and you have to compensate for not having a lot to do. In contrast, when you're challenged, your attention is on the task and the body takes care of itself. There has been evidence that anorexics, when given the opportunity to care for others, focused less on how their bodies felt and more on who they were caring for. It's scientific. The flow theory is scientific as well. The optimal state of being is when one is doing something at which he is skilled but also challenged. When we aren't engaged in this state enough, that's when problems occur. 

I started jotting down my symptoms again this week in an attempt to see if there was a pattern or a difference depending on how much I ate / exercised, etc. I was curious about whether I might feel better if I ignored the discomfort for a bit and just pushed through with 'normal' eating, functioning, etc. For instance, perhaps the things I feel are normal when you're trying to get weight back up? But I'm not really convinced of that because if I ignore the discomfort for too long, it eventually builds up and I have to address it again. And medically speaking, diagnostics do indicate that something is amiss.

Perhaps I could go looking for some networking / educational opportunities again in new / different places than I may have tried before. (I use 'networking' synonymously with 'support' 'cause it sounds cooler, hehe). But it's been a while and I've been through a lot in recent years and I'm eager to keep growing and expanding as much as I can. Especially now that school is practically finished. (One last paper to finish this weekend and I'm completely done!) What's on my plate now is work, possibly the wellness coaching certification still at some point, reading for pleasure when I can (have to keep up with my goodreads list), and getting my health squared away. And whatever educational things that might be tied in specifically with my job. It's a lot, but none of it is anything I don't wanna do. I wanna do it all, and I want to have endless hours in a day to do it!

New job!

I just got hired for a job I applied to! I interviewed for it last week on Monday, got the call on Wed. evening, then started orientation on Tues. this week. It's at a holistic health center that does naturopathy / alternative medicine, and they're just opening a new location (with plans to expand even more). I like being part of things that are just starting up and teams that are close-knit. And I like that my passion and work will finally be combined!

On day one we watched a film about how the body and mind are connected. That was really inspiring. I remember learning about some of it in psychology – about how people in modern society find themselves in the 'fight or flight' mindframe more often than is healthy. It's designed to protect us, but whenever we're in protection mode, it inhibits the growth function of cells and that leads to disease. Even the word disease can be broken down into 'dis' and 'ease,' meaning when we're not 'at ease,' we have disease. How true!

We also started learning about the things the center does / offers. One thing is hydration therapy with kangen water. It's water that you filter through a machine to alter the ph level to increase oxygenation. Pretty fancy. They also do nutrition and weight management, stress management, and pain / disease management (particularly for patients whose doctors have given up or given them a terminal diagnosis). With alternative strategies and reshaping of thoughts, people have overcome cancer, Alzheimer's patients have improved their memory...I'm impressed. Two modalities we learned about yesterday which were completely new to me were pulsed electromagnetic field therapy and bio-mats. The magnetic therapy breaks up red blood cells and enables circulation to improve, and the bio-mats are made with amethyst crystal which provides far infrared rays and negative ions to energize cells.

What will I be doing? Well, a couple of things. Since I have a little bit of experience with biometric screening (thanks to the undergrad exercise testing and prescription class I took), I might do some of that at health fairs. (They'll have nurses on staff to do it at the center). I might be doing some appt scheduling and reception also. But the clinical director liked that I had a wellness background, so she wants to have me work with her on corporate wellness stuff. Details are still being ironed out, but overall I'm excited that I got this opportunity

Digestive health & nutrition

My career change came about through a desire to get healthy and help others be healthy too. I know I've probably mentioned that before, and lately in my posts I've been talking about developments in both my career and in my own health separately. But believe it or not, when I find companies I want to work for, I sometimes look at them through the lens of a job seeker AND a consumer. Not all companies – for example, I would not be seeking weight loss services or health insurance. But for some companies that promote holistic / integrative health, I think to myself, “yeah, I'm a consumer of that.” I guess specifically, though, I'm trying to repair my digestive health. And I did not study gastroenterology, so I would not be qualified to help anyone with that, but digestion and nutrition are such relatable and accessible topics that it makes sense that they'd be driving forces behind my being in the health and wellness field in general. Everything is connected.

While it seemed that I'd found a solution to my problem, I'm finding that even though there is a specific medicine to treat the specific condition, there's an ongoing process of maintenance that needs to be carried out. So I might simply never be able to go back to my previous ways. Just as maintaining weight is a way of life, so is digestion. I can't really say if there's anything I did to cause my condition, but for whatever reason, I couldn't digest certain carbohydrates or foods containing fodmaps (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols). There's a special diet built around avoiding such foods, which is really restrictive (at least in my opinion). There are so many foods normally considered healthy that you can't have if you want to avoid intestinal backlash. And it sucks because it makes me rethink everything I thought I knew about what was good for me. I DID know what was good according to what they teach in school, but in school I never learned about specific GI problems that make that stuff moot. I wish it could be as easy as finishing my medicine and going back to what I knew was healthy and adding probiotics. But I don't know if it will be yet. I don't know if I'll need to avoid certain foods indefinitely.

And here's another thing. I haven't even totally adopted the suggested diet modification yet because it seems too difficult! For instance, take whole wheat. It has fiber and vitamins and nutrients. If you eliminate it, you have to make sure you get those things elsewhere. But the urgency of eliminating it isn't as great for me as it'd be if I had a wheat allergy or celiac disease (which I don't). But I may have an intolerance. Intolerances don't really do any severe damage to your body the way food allergies and celiac disease do, but they cause discomfort. So the question becomes, do you want to deal with the discomfort or not? And one more final thing. I've come across a plethora of special diets for GI problems like mine. Not only is there the low fodmap one, there's also the “specific carbohydrate diet,” the GAPS diet, and some others. And there are some differences in them – like one food that may be okay on one of them isn't okay on another. So it sort of drives you crazy. Who knew that digestive health could be so damn complicated? But I guess that brings me back to the beginning when I was saying that it's an ongoing process to stay healthy in life.

Goings-on

I finally got a diagnosis for my physical ailment which is what I thought it might be, so I'm glad it's figured out. Kinda sucks that my doctor didn't think to do this most recent test until after I wasted lots of money on another more expensive test that I didn't need. And I'm having to jump through hoops to get the medicine for what I now know I have. It's so expensive that there's a manufacturer hotline for it which offers the chance of getting financial assistance. I'm hoping that works out, but I won't know for a bit.

My sport psychology class is underway, and it seems really interesting. Even if it's not my career goal, I still love it the way I love fiction (which also isn't my career). Speaking of fiction, which I don't normally write about, I've managed to keep reading without too much of a break despite the busy grad school load I had! I've always feared being too busy (and I hope I don't jinx myself now) but since the start of last semester I finished Beautiful Creatures, Shatter Me (the last book of the series because I'd read the other two previously), Divergent, and now I'm halfway through the Maze Runner series. Since so many books are being made into movies now, that's sort of how I'm determining what I read next.

For my internship, I've had two more meetings since my first. It's not like a traditional job where I go into an office everyday or have set hours or anything. She works out of her home, so when we meet, it's for a few hours once a week (that's what it's been so far), and my classmate who interned with her during the spring has come the last two times and we've all been working together. It's fun. And she usually makes sure we have stuff to work on throughout the week at our own home. One project is a book she's writing on marijuana, which she plans to publish soon so people in Florida can be better informed when it comes time to vote on legalizing it for medical use in November. I'm contributing to it by researching and providing info on marijuana cessation (with the idea being that if it gets legalized, more people will probably use it and there might be a need to help people quit if it turns into addiction). At this point, people who want to quit are referred to drug abuse programs because it is a drug. People haven't really thought about it as being similar to smoking cigarettes, but it is similar to that as well. There are many smoking cessation programs, but none specifically geared toward marijuana. I talked to someone in Colorado about whether there might be something like that in the works, but she said there isn't anything. She said they have a hard enough time getting people to quit tobacco and no one seems to want to quit marijuana either. I'm not particularly focused on drug issues, but it does relate to the health and wellness field. When I mentioned that I had an interest in program development, C (as I'll refer to her now to make it easier) said she could tie it into this project.

The other stuff I've been working on has been related to my finding an actual job in the field. She helped me revise my resume and I've started checking boards regularly now. I'm checking the Dept. of Health, some industry boards my professor gave me (phfr.com, hfit, hpcareer.net, bluefishjobs to name a few), careerbuilder (under the search term 'wellness coach' as opposed to browsing job categories which are too broad on that site), and craigslist as a back-up. Additionally, I went through all the brochures I collected at the Wellness Expo back in December and found one for a company in St. Pete that does exactly what I want to do – their employees do wellness coaching and give presentations and workshops on a variety of topics to a variety of clients. I don't really know if I'm qualified for it yet, but C is telling me to try anyway because some places might provide training. Speaking of which, she's letting me go through the binder for the WellCoaches program that she did so I can get some self-study out of it before signing up to do the actual program (which I said I wanted to do in my last post). I still want to do the program, I'm just not sure when yet. And speaking of the Wellness Council (which sponsered the Expo I went to), I'm now on their email list so I just got notified of a mini-conference they're having next month on behavior change. So I've got that marked on my calendar. And also a meeting in July for the Partners in Obesity Prevention group that I just found out about from my classmate.

I'm not sure if I should hold out for a job in my field at this point or not. I've come across a few things where I thought “well, I could be doing this in the meantime” or “if nothing happens for a while and I really need something I could apply.” But I like being able to devote more time to my class and internship and searching for jobs in my field and going to networking things and all. Or maybe I just initially felt too busy to go applying for things that, at the time, seemed do-able but weren't long-term prospects. I don't know, we'll see.

Career planning

Fourth semester is done! And I already had my first meeting for my internship on Friday last week which went really well. I basically have myself a career coach / mentor who's advising me on where I fit / will fit in the industry (being a consultant herself, she's worked in many areas of it). I know in my last post I said I was veering away from being a fitness specialist “because it was never the only thing I was interested in.” Originally, the idea of teaching group exercise and doing fitness assessments / prescriptions appealed to me because it was a way to get out from behind a desk and a way to cure myself of my own health issues. But as I've mentioned, my health issues actually elevated themselves in the last semester and came to interfere with my ability to do that exercise stuff I was originally gonna do. That's an additional reason why I started crossing over into health promotion. And while there may be a little bit of question as to whether I chose the right graduate degree, I can say that it was probably the only degree program I would've gotten accepted into. (And I was lucky I applied when I did because they've now upped the criteria to get in; I probably wouldn't get in if I applied now). So I don't have any huge regrets; my degree is kind of like a door opener that will allow me to pursue other certifications. Originally, I would've gone for the HFS from ACSM, but I'm scrapping that. I want to get my wellness coaching certification from WellCoaches. It does have a training program you have to go through instead of simply studying on your own like some certifications, but I do qualify for it because of my degree (they accept a range of health related degrees). Getting the specific work that that will allow me to do seems like the most immediate job search strategy for me – in other words, it's what I'd qualify for the quickest. The other interest I have, health promotion / education, seems a little further from my reach. Some of the job ads I saw for wellness coaches actually did incorporate that, though, which was cool. They were a combo of one-on-one coaching and implementing wellness programs. If I can do that, I'll be happy and fulfilling my goal. But some health education jobs require the CHES certification (certified health education specialist) which I don't qualify for. For that, I'd need some further education (like an MPH degree). And another upward move from wellness coaching would be licensure for counseling (there are actually a lot of different licenses out there related to behavioral health). But again, I have to focus on the now. It seems to be continually evolving, but I'm moving forward.

Post to procrastinate working on final projects for school

I am going to be interning with the person from whom I hoped to hear, which I'm really happy about! And I'm becoming more certain about letting go of the idea of becoming a fitness specialist in favor of becoming a health promotion specialist / wellness coach. It just seems like a better fit, I think. Wellness is a more global concept (of which physical fitness is just one aspect). While I definitely had an interest in fitness, it was never the only thing I was interested in. And it feels sorta repetitive for me to go into it again, so I don't know if I will too much. It's just on my mind, that's all. The idea of what makes us feel happy. Sometimes it's being active, sometimes it's being creative...but it's always about being in a state of 'flow.' When you don't have that, that's when wellness (be it mental or physical, because they're so connected) is impacted. I know this. I've been trying to find a way into it, trying to figure out how it fits/applies to my life at the same time. And I feel like I'm on the precipice of getting into it, of joining my interests with my work so they'll finally be merged. I hope!

And I want to form new relationships like the ones I formed in undergrad. I want to recreate that feeling I had upon joining a close-knit community (like theatre school) where simply being present gives you a sense of belonging and an almost automatic erasure of lines that divide professional from personal. Where you can just share everything. Because as adults, we have so many secrets and protective walls and it's kind of rare to break those down because we always have to be professional, ya know? But I can feel new opportunities on my horizon. They have to be there. It's funny, one of my best friends used to say that if people could read her, great – but she wouldn't volunteer information about herself unless someone asked. I often feel like I have so much I want to volunteer but it's the type of stuff you just don't. So you secretly hope and wish for someone to ask, lol. For that opportunity to arise where you can break down walls. I guess it's the old theatre person in me that still longs for that and still is obsessed with human nature. Obsession with human nature can manifest itself in theatre, literature, psychology...all the subjects I was interested in – and science. And wellness and health. Now that I think about it, I suppose there's some sense in grouping the terms 'arts and sciences.' (Universities often have 'colleges of arts and sciences.') They can go together. Maybe I'll have a unique marketing angle for myself as a wellness coach someday – 'background in theatre and exercise science.' Lol.

4th semester almost done!

Well, there is much to keep up with regarding my physical health, and I don't know if it's worth writing about except that it's interesting to me. Is 'interesting' even the right word? Maybe important? Relevant? I don't know. Anyway, I'm now taking four vitamin supplements because I was deficient in them. I didn't have anything abnormal show up from an upper endoscopy, but the doctor just now suggested I do the hydrogen breath test, which seems like it would target my symptoms a little better. (SIBO, intolerance to certain sugars, etc.) If anything shows up from that, the treatment I think would just be diet and probiotic (or maybe antibiotic) related. Which I'm kind of already doing, but I guess it never hurts to dig a little deeper. It's just that the digging gets expensive after a while. Like I really need medical costs right now, right? Another suggestion that had been mentioned before was a gastric emptying test to check transit time of food. That sounds like an interesting test because I've always been curious about it, but do I suspect any abnormality there? I think it's one of those things that can vary from day to day depending on lifestyle or hormones...but that's just my non-medical guess. So while it may be interesting, I don't know if it's actually necessary.

As for summer plans, they're still up in the air. I didn't get any of the corporate site internships which I was a little bummed about at first. But my professor gave me another lead and I got a 'possibility depending on schedule which I'll know by mid-April' response from the wellness person my classmate is interning with right now. I also got to thinking if I didn't get a corporate internship, maybe it'd give me a chance to volunteer a few hours at more than one place simultaneously?

I'm also not sure if there will be any wellness center training over the summer. The once-a-week training that was supposed to happen this semester got cancelled so the coordinator said she'd try to do some over the summer. Guess I'll see about that too. But so far I have my one online class, the task of starting to search the job boards for a real job for when I get done in August, and the rest of my medical appts which are still gonna be happening throughout the summer. Oh, and maybe studying for the HFS certification exam. See? I'm gonna be totally busy even without having a 40-hour a week internship. I still do want some practical experience, of course, but it's nice to know I could maybe take half a day off if I need to without worrying I'll miss something. I hope everything works out. Right now I need to get through these last few weeks of the spring semester. (At least comp exams are done, I passed those). Won't life be grand when I get a job in my field and I'm healthy and I'm paying for things and I can relax like a normal person? That's not to say I'm not normal now; it just feels more like 'life is on the line' or 'so much is at stake' or something. But even when things are like that, you can still sometimes step back from it in your mind, read a book, be with friends, pretend that everything is the way you want it. Technically, if you're doing something by choice, whatever 'stage' you're in should already be 'what you want.' Even if it's meant to lead somewhere else. It's about being in the moment I guess. And while my current stage is definitely challenging, it's where I've chosen to be.