Turn the Page ...

I’ll soon be starting a new chapter of my life.  After nearly 2 decades of going broke working in medical transcription, I’m finally getting out!   In 13 short days I start a new job, a real job with people and an hourly wage and benefits and paid vacation and everything.  I cannot even begin to describe how amazingly ecstatic I am to be turning my back on being a hermit and rejoining the part of the world where the people are.  I have spent the last 14 years working at home and I tell you what, my animals are really tired of me talking to them – almost as tired as I am of talking to them.  I won’t know what to do with myself with people that actually talk back with their own thoughts and voices instead of the little voices in my head that my animals have.  I’ve spent all these years at home to be with my daughter and while I do not begrudge her one second of  that time, I have to say I’m thrilled to be rejoining the world.  No more dealing with transcription companies that claim they have tons of work only to find out that “tons of work” is loosely translated as “We have 70 transcriptionists here to cover the work of 15 transcriptionists, so you’ll be fighting tooth and nail for work and you will have to scrape pennies together to buy the luxuries, like toothpaste and toilet paper.”   No more dealing with a stress level through the roof because one mistake could kill a patient and cause me to be sued for everything I don’t have.  No more listening to doctors burp, chew, slurp, yawn and slur through dictations. If you've never had to do this, you cannot imagine how rattling it can be to listen to the sounds of beeping machines and various bodily functions for 6 minutes.  It sounds like a short time, but when you're listening to it, it seems like a lifetime.  No more trying to decipher what the heck some half asleep dictator is mumbling for 20 minutes only to find out that they were carrying on a conversation with someone else while recording.  No more getting paid half a normal rate to retype an entire report because the voice recognition software has gone half crazy trying to decipher a thick foreign accent. No more!  No more working every stinking holiday.  I may even actually get to take a vacation sometime, since I haven’t had one in 11 years.   Yep, I’m moving on, transcription companies, it’s finally time to turn the page.