If you read my bio for these pages, you'll see that I spent many years working in the IT industry.
Now I'm a podiatrist and you may wonder how such a dramatic change of career path occurred. Well, it was like this:
From 1989 to around 2012 I was a, IT contractor (consultant is far too grand a word to describe what I did), mostly as an analyst programmer, sometimes doing supporting stuff and occasionally testing new software.
I should say at the outset that I was never brilliant, I was adequate, competent and knew what I was doing but my biggest handicap always was that I never loved it.
It had felt like the right thing to be doing when I started as I'd always had computers at home from when I was a boy in the early 80's and had taught myself to program using a Commodore Pet and an Apple 2 and later at school a BBC micro, so when I ended up in the IT industry, I didn't really think much about it.
That changed when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and our life took an unexpected turning as a result, and I ended up as a mobile chiropodist.
Sometimes, cancer treatment can have unexpected consequences and in her case one of those was that she developed an ingrowing toenail.
It was very painful, and bad enough to need surgery to remove part of the nail.
Now, I was out of work at the time and, because she was going to have an anaesthetic in her foot she asked if I'd drive her as her car insurance would be invalid for the rest of the day.
So we arrived, and the guy called her in from the waiting room. Seeing me he asked if I was the husband, I admitted this was so, and he asked if I'd like to come and watch. I was out of the chair like a shot, and https://opensea.io/collection/bigfeet my life altered at that moment, because we could have talked about anything.
The present Mrs Izzard wasn't interested, she was wanted to lie back and be told when it was all over. If there'd been a match on the tv the previous night we might have talked about that or anything else, but instead I started off by asking him how he got into this strange occupation of being a podiatrist..
„Oh well, you know, ho, ho, ho, foot fetish“ he said and we promptly did all the gags about it being a footnote on his career, having to toe the line, nail his technique, don't sell your sole etc. They don't ever get any funnier.
So he told me that he'd come into the profession later in life and had originally wanted to retrain as a physiotherapist, but someone had suggested podiatry as an alternative as it was similar in many respects and far less congested to apply to university.
So he had a look, decided he like it and went for it. He told about doing an access course, getting into uni, about the course and images.google.ps finally getting his degree and starting work.
All during this he was explaining what he was doing with my wife's toe, why he was doing it, what had caused the nail to go bad, and I was enthralled.
At which point, I said „hold on, scroll back, not a doctor then?“ No, he told me, health professional, just need a degree.
When we left I remarked to my wife about what a wonderful job that seemed and how I'd love to be able to do that. Which stuck with me for the rest of that summer until, eventually we were on holiday in Spain having a beer on the balcony after putting our son to bed, and it came to me very firmly that I really wanted to do that and was determined to look into it.
Which I did and classificados.virtualnetinformatica.com.br discovered that there was a bursary that would cover about half my monthly bills, that the NHS would pay the tuition fees and those things meant that it would be possible for me to do it if I got a part time job to cover the other half of the bills.
So, I got onto an access course, applied to the Birmingham School of Podiatry and was accepted. In the meantime I went back to the clinic and spent an afternoon observing another podiatrist working and decided that I was making the right choice.
I didn't all go smoothly, because instead of taking 3 years, my degree took 4 as I stuffed a couple of modules in 2nd year and had to redo them, which was annoying and frustrating at the time but, in the event has made me a better clinician so, it worked out positively in the end.
Now I work in 3 clinics, have a mobile business around Kingswinford, nft art Dudley and Stourbridge and the surrounding towns and villages, work at a retirement village and I am certain every single day that I made the best decision ever to follow through and white feet change career.