I truly believe in asking for signs. Ever since I was a little girl my mom and Grandma Skandamis used to talk about asking for signs.

The whole reason why I made the decision to become a pediatric echocardiographer was because I heard a little voice nudging me to. It was on a random day on the way home from work. At the time I had been working at the only pediatric cardiology office in the area (150 mile radius to be approximate) for over 8 years. I never really thought, previously, of myself as a medical care giver… and on this particular day nothing had happened that would have inspired me to pursue training. It was just another day at work. But on the ride home I looked into the sky at the tree line and heard a voice say “you should go to echo school.”

And at first I was a little stunned and taken back that this thought came to me out of no where. I didn’t know what to think because it never occurred to me to even consider going to school to learn how to do echos… in fact I was in my senior year of art school at SCAD so it was never in my radar.

But something about that voice made me start a series of asking for signs. When I heard the voice speak to me…my daughter Uma, was in the back seat crying. She was one at the time… almost two but that day I forgot to bring her pacifier. So she just kept crying and crying and crying. So I asked God if going to echo school was something I should pursue, then let Uma stop crying. And she did… immediately. And I thought …. okay.

So I kept driving… but wanted more of a confirmation… so I asked for a second sign… I asked that if I were to truly pursue this make it so that I get all the way to the after school program to pick up my other daughter without her crying the rest of the way. And I got all the way there, without a peep, pulled into the parking lot, the song with the lyrics “take a bite out of my heart” was playing… and I turned off the car with an overwhelming feeling that I needed to do it.

So that night I researched what it would take to get trained… went to work the next day… and talked to the two echo techs at the office about my interest… and to this day I got chills. The oldest tech was planning on retiring in two years, the time it would take for me to finish school, but hadn’t said anything yet… it was divine timing…. and the rest is history.

I’ve been a pediatric echo tech now for 7 years… and working in the same office for almost 17 years…. seems crazy to me… it all happened with a little voice and a series of signs…

I wouldn’t be who I am or have the relationships I have if I hadn’t listened to that little sign…