Too many career changes?

As I prepared for the interview I had last Friday for the job I think I've already been blessed with (the one which will put me back into the pathology field), I thought a lot about a recent blog post I read recently about the advantages and disadvantages of changing careers too much. And I thought it reminded me of me.(Is that bad english, or what, LOL??)

As an adult with ADD, I'll admit that it's a struggle to stay interested in things that don't change with much frequency. That's also a large part of the reason why I think I'm a perfect fit for the field of medicine because there's ALWAYS something new to learn. But changing jobs frequently can also be a curse of sorts since I realize that if I had stayed on the first gig I had when I moved to Metro DC after my first MS degree, I'd have that "long term career stability" that every employer seems to look for in potential hires these days. But the flip side of that is that I wouldn't have the overall VERY satisfying career experiences I've had to this point either.

Which brings me back to the field of Pathology in a BIG way. It's not just that I've been doing something related to the field since 2002. It's not even that I really enjoy the "science" of the field and think I'm pretty good at it too. These days, it's about the fact that even the idea of doing something that isn't at least peripherally related to Pathology would be like throwing away everything I've learned in the past 11 years.

Now I'm pretty lucky in that a LOT of what makes up Health Informatics my newest interest, is somehow related to Pathology whether I'm talking about electronic health records (EHR's) which are 70% path lab report data or biomarker evaluation of a recently removed breast tumor. So in this field, my education, training, and recent job experiences aren't a "waste", not that I believe in that term anyway. But the idea of doing something which involves direct patient contact in the future, would not only require learning a LOT of new things, it wouldn't allow for a significant use of what I already know so well.

So I get it, it's waaayyyyy t0o early for me to start thinking along residency lines but I guess I'm starting to think a little more long term about "change" than I had in the past. It just seems that there has to be a point where I get tired of "reinventing the wheel", and I think I crossed that point not that long ago. I'm also a believer in the fact that things don't happen in our lives by accident, so that microscope that I imagined was chasing me down the street may actually have been trying to tell me something really important. And now that I'm too tired to run any further, I've decided to slow down long enough to hear what it has to say.

PS - I haven't lost my mind in the new year, I realize that microscopes don't have legs and can't talk, LOL!!!

PSS- I came across the following case while spending a little quality time on the Hopkins unknown pathology website. It shows an an aggressive form of HPV in the nasal cavity. Now I understand how/why there are increased cancer cases caused by HPV in the throat. But I can't for the life of me figure out how someone ended up with it in their nose. Nor do I want to.