If not a nurse, then what?

Short background, I'm a 35-yr old prior cop who has gone through a period of total disability. Now that I'm (mostly) over that, I've decided to go to college and get a degree for something that pays better and is less dangerous. I love the idea of being in the medical field, but honestly feel that med school is a bit beyond me. Nursing was my second choice, and I thought I had a great career plan. I'm almost done with my pre-reqs, I'm working at a hospital that pays tuition reimbursement (they say I have to work there for at least a year when I'm done, but I look at that as a guaranteed job, rather than a bad thing!). I thought I would continue working there part-time as a patient aide until I had my Rn Associates, then work part-time as a nurse and work my way up to NP. Sounded good to me.

I've started seeing more and more threads lately about there being too many nurses in the market now, though. My area is definitely seeing no shortage, as there are three big nursing schools pumping them out as fast as they can. I've seen threads with nurses begging people not to go nursing as it's bringing down the demand, thus killing the pay. So... before I go through the trouble of getting accepted into nursing school, what are some good alternatives? I would prefer to stay in the hospital setting, as I like the feeling of doing something good with my life, but since I have a growing family to feed, the pay needs to be decent too.

I know about what careers are in the medical field, I'm just wondering what would be better to go into than nursing, I suppose. I had one friend suggest PT, but then I had a PT guy tell me that it's even harder to find a PT job than a nursing job! (Course, I guess right now it's hard to find any jobs!) Basically (and I don't mean this to sound rude) You keep telling us nurse wannabe's to go somewhere else, be more specific and tell us where to go! (and no, I don't mean )!