To Heal or not to Heal

Once again a thought that is on my mind: should i try out a healing character for a change? I got myself a Warrior specced as a tank and to my suprise i like doing that alot... i tanked more 5mans pre-TBC with just a couple of points in protection so i already had some experience with it.
When i reached 70 i was in doubt for quite a while if i should go full prot but when Alt-Karazhan was introduced i respecced on my second run as i was gonna be that days Main Tank as there weren't any of our Mains tanks... i was sold and have had many runs as a MT in Kara since then.
Would i mainswitch to my tank? Quite a hard choice, if only i sucked a bit more at playing a Hunter. (but no, i don't)

On my Shaman i've done some offhealing but never mainhealed a 5man yet, let alone a raid. I don't have the gear for it yet but i am curious if it would be a valid spec later on...truth told i do like doing dps on my Shaman aswell and again, eventho i say so myself, i do a pretty good job at it.
Apart from the fact that i topped the damage meters in most 5man runs i did so far, i also drop an occasional heal if needed and drop totems for my fellow partymembers.. even those who didn't benefit myself.
Like i likely mentioned before my GF is trying out healing on her Paladin so there is no real need for me to go resto, but somewhere i'm kind of disappointed i don't get somewhat forced into this role... this would at least force me to have a small taste of it.

Back in the MC days i had this Oomkin druid which i took along on a MC run. Now Moonkin Druids were quite crappy back then, 3 Starfire's and we were out of mana... i was happy if i could last one Core hound! So i often just helped along on healing, sometimes even without a choice.
Now what i do remember of that time is that i wasn't seeing more then healthbars and that healing was more like a whack-a-mole game as some other blogger called it on Wowinsider. I didn't see a single thing of what happened arround me (not that MC had that interesting surroundings tho).
I did blame this on my own noobness on healing and i figured if i had more practise things would have gone smoother, leaving me more time to enjoy the raid. I also realise the way people heal has been changed quite a bit in TBC so trying to sketch an image of a possible healing carreer might not be a fair thing here.

Going healer will give me quite a bigger shot at joining 5mans later on so that should be part of the equation aswell imo, but if i delay that choice too long i might miss out on healing gear... i don't want to pick dps quest rewards over healing ones and be sorry about it later.
I'm also doing some PvP and it would be a damn shame if i would spend my points on the "wrong" set of kit.
The plan, as poor of a plan as it is, is to get as many healing items as possible from quests and perhaps an odd instance drop if the present healer doesn't want it... and hopefully i end up with some reasonable kit anyway. I'll stay dps as long as possible and will slowly gather an offspec kit. Perhaps i can get myself some crafted stuff later on aswell, a couple of blues will get me a long way i suppose.
Sadly enough i already vendored some Elemental (spelldamage) rewards which could have been a nice alternative to healingkit for now, not so smart ey?
Guess i'm truelly lacking Intellect at the moment.