Matters of the Heart

Kristi Davis found her first career by following her heart. She found her second by imaging her heart.

Not long ago, Kristi Davis had what some people might think of as a cool career. For six years, she worked as a radio DJ at Minneapolis-based KQRS-FM before finally accepting that radio was a dead end for her. "I just couldn't make ends meet and I finally had to say enough was enough," she recalls.

"Despite what most people think, there's absolutely no money in radio. I kept trying to make it work and waiting for something to happen, but it just didn't. I finally had to let the dream go and start a new dream."

That new dream started when Davis enrolled at Saint Paul College in the fall of 2005. "I had no idea what I wanted to do," she admits. "I figured I'd get an associate's degree in the medical field, but I didn't know in what exactly. I started looking at modalities like radiation therapy, respiratory therapy, and general sonography [ultrasound]. I chose a specialty within sonography called echocardiography, which is taking images of the heart while looking for cardiac pathologies."

Why the medical field? "Money," she says simply. "I knew there was money in the medical field. There are so many different allied health professions and I knew I would fit into one. I'm 28, so I felt more pressured to make a decent salary than if I was 18. I knew a two-year program at a community college would be better than going to a more expensive school."

Saint Paul College was the natural choice since it's only a mile away from Davis' house. A funny thing happened, however, when Davis found herself in Lynn Dreese's Anatomy and Physiology 1 (A&P1) class. "Taking Lynn's class completely woke me up," Davis says. "I had been fearful of taking her class. I was scared of science. I thought, 'Oh, anatomy and physiology, I'm going to fail this.' But I ended up exceeding my expectations."

Indeed, Davis ranked first out of 22 students in Dreese's A&P1 class, and the following term, ranked first out of 13 students in Dreese's Anatomy and Physiology 2 class. "I fell in love with anatomy and physiology, and I attribute that to Lynn," Davis says. "She's one of the most phenomenal instructors I've ever had."

Dreese, the chair of the College's Math and Science department, is a member of Davis' fan club as well. "She's very modest," Dreese says. "Before every test, Kristi would say, 'I don't know how I'm going to do.' She was always surprised that she finished first in the class on almost every test. Kristi didn't have any direction when she started here, but when she realized how talented she was in science, it confirmed for her that she would do well in some science area."

When Davis confided in Dreese a semester later that she wanted to go into either sonography or echocardiography, Dreese, whose son was born with a heart defect, put her in touch with her son's doctor at the Children's Heart Clinic at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. "I said, 'Call and tell the office that you're a student of mine and ask to talk to an echocardiographer.' I told Kristi to ask that person some specific questions: Do you like your career? What is every day like? How did you know you should go into this field versus sonography?"

Dreese's suggestion helped clarify Davis' career path. "Kristi followed up on it and it helped her make her decision," she notes. "The person who talked to her said, 'Echocardiography is where you want to be in Minneapolis. There are jobs waiting for you when you get out.'"

Davis' own research confirmed that recommendation. "The market is begging for echocardiographers," she says. "Cardiac clinics are opening up all over the place and they need echos desperately."

Since Saint Paul College doesn't have an echocardiography program, Davis enrolled at Argosy University in Eagan in January. She feels fortunate to have gotten in the door. "Argosy accepted 14 people this year," she says. "It's highly specialized and very competitive."

Davis's first semester at Argosy is going well. "We're still taking generals, but we'll be jumping into the echo program next semester and concentrating on that for a year and a half," she says. "Then it will be six months of clinicals."

Before Davis even took her first echocardiography class, she was hooked. "I've gone to the scanning lab a couple of times and it fascinates me," she says. "The senior students use us newbies as guinea pigs and scan us for practice. Seeing my heart on that monitor was surreal."

Dreese couldn't be prouder of her star pupil. "Our motto at Saint Paul College is, 'Start here. Go anywhere,'" she says. "And Kristi is a shining example of that."

Phil Bolsta is a Blaine-based freelance writer.

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