Hello again. I am a medical transcriptionist. I have been a medical transcriptionist for over 13 years, since 1988. Before that, I went to college for 2 years and 3 months to get a degree in Business. I majored in Executive Secretarial, with a Medical Major. I also learned business and legal fields. I minored in Business Management. I did that because, even way back then, I wanted to someday own my own business and work from my home.
You see, before I actually went to college, I got married -- twice even. My first marriage was to a man 10 years older than me and lasted all of about eight months. I was very young and very naive. I got married again at the age of 25. By 1985, I had four children and a step-daughter whom we had custody of. I made up my mind that I would go to college when my husband and I were separated for a while and I was left trying to support the kids by myself and pregnant. In 1986, when our youngest was a year old, my husband and I got back together; and I started college.
I actually started out majoring in court reporting, but that is a field with very high pressure. With five kids at home, I had enough pressure. After a year of that, I got pneumonia and had to drop out of a speed building class. I decided then to change my major to medical transcription. It was a class we had to take for the court reporting, but I loved it. I was also a "natural" at it. I went to college, studied, and passed finals, all with five kids at home. Finally, I was finished. I graduated with a 3.75 grade point average.
I went to work at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa, within two weeks after my graduation in November of 1988. During the 2 years I worked there, I also worked in two different doctors offices, one a urologist and the other a dermatologist.
In May of 1990, my husband was killed, leaving me a widow at the age of 32. I then decided to move to the Ozarks and take my children out of the city. I bought a place in the Ozarks and started my own transcription business there. Although I loved it there, and my business was doing well, I decided to move back to Iowa in 1991 when my father found that he had cancer. I wanted to be closer to him as we did not know how long he would last. I bought a home in Des Moines in 1991. It subsequently burned down in 1992, taking all of my business equipment with it. I got a job at another hospital, Des Moines General Hospital. I worked there for almost a year, worked at home, and worked in a psychiatrist's office for a time.
I bought another house, I bought another computer, and I took on a business partner. We did several accounts around the city area. I lost the hearing in my left ear in January of 1993. My partner then did the transcription while I did business consulting and new business set-ups. In June of 1993, my father passed away. In July and August of 1993, the Floods of 1993 hit Iowa. In August, I lost my home to the floods. We rented another house. Even though I could not hear well enough at that time to do transcription, I still kept my hand in with the business consulting and drumming up new contracts for my partner to work on. I got married again in 1994 (to an alcoholic, but that's another story). In 1992, I also wrote a book with a very dear friend of mine. My brother and I also started a second book which we finally finished in 1996.
After waiting almost a year for FEMA to do something about our house, we found that our home had been outside of the designated city buy-out areas (two of them) by just a few blocks. The FEMA inspector told us that we were considered the "cuts and bruises", the people that slipped through the cracks. They gave us a total of $800, which was for the appliances in my basement. So, now we had no home to go back to, and the rental house was being sold out from under us. Rental properties were at a premium in the city of Des Moines at that time. People who owned rental properties had it made. Many of them were not taking renters with children, let alone renters with pets. This goes to show you that even intelligent and motivated people can become homeless through no fault of their own. It just takes the right set of circumstances.
Okay, there we were, living in our camper, in various sets of campgrounds around the city, still looking for something to rent or buy. It soon became obvious that there would be nothing available that we could afford there. So, we bought property in the Ozarks and moved back there with the idea of homesteading. We lived in tents and our camper, in a small mobile home (tiny), then a larger mobile home. In the meantime, I regained the hearing in my ear; and I worked for almost 2 years at Lake Ozarks General Hospital in Osage Beach, Missouri. We gave up one property and bought another. My husband and I split up in December of 1996.
Between all the moves back and forth to and from Missouri and Iowa, and a divorce, I got together with my current husband. We have been together for over five years now, and we got married in July of 1999. We have known each other for about 16 years, and we had been good friends all that time. We lived in Iowa for just a little over a year, as my two oldest daughters were having babies. We got a grandson, Kyle, in January of 1997, and a granddaughter, Kaitlyn, in March of 1997. We were there for both of their first birthday parties and their first Christmas. We both missed the Ozarks, though. It was "home" to us. We made an offer on Valentines Day of 1998 on our present home.
In the meantime, I worked in Iowa at the Mercy Franklin Center, which is a psychiatric and substance abuse facility. I did not work at home there or in any other doctor's offices. I began to do some research on companies who hired home transcriptionists as soon as we decided to move back to the Ozarks. I wanted to work at home again after we moved. I finally got arrangements made with the company I worked for when we first moved, Image Stat, which is based in California. I liked this company in particular because they did not work with transcribers and tapes. All transcription is done through a Dictaphone Communications Phone which dials into their transcription "tank" (a digital voice recording holding tank).
Also, they were willing to sell me the computer and the special C-phone and take it out of my paychecks in payments. By that time, my last computer had already died. They sent me my equipment about a week before we moved in July. As soon as we moved in, we set my equipment up. I began my training by phone the following week. Within two weeks, I was in business again! Transcription is a difficult job in many ways. The equipment is expensive (ouch), but it is worth it. I did not print any records out, but sent them via phone modem back to their holding tanks where they could access the records at their leisure.
By difficult job, I mean that you run across doctors with foreign accents, static in the line, difficult or new terms, new medications, etc. Fortunately, I have a good ear for foreign accents; and I have somewhat specialized in them. You have to have good English skills, spelling and punctuation skills, sentence structure skills. You also have to be able to type (the faster, the better) and type accurately. Working for yourself, you have to be a self-starter. If you want a day off, yes, you can take it; but you don't get vacation pay, sick days, or holidays off paid. Many companies now offer health insurance, 401K plans, and many other benefits to their home transcriptionists. Some offer vacation pay and sick pay. Some even offer incentive pay on top of a set amount per line.
Right now, I am working as an at-home transcriptionist on a full-time basis for a local hospital, after working prn for them for over a year. I have been offered other clinic jobs, which I could also do at home. However, they would expect pick-up and delivery, which I am not willing to do. I don't have to drive anywhere to work at home. I don't have to get dressed up. I can work as hard as I want or as easy as I want. I can be here when my kids leave for school, and I am here when they come home from school. If there is an emergency during the day, I'm here to answer the phone and take care of it. I don't miss the office politics that you usually find in doctor's offices and hospitals, the gossip, the rumors, etc. I am happy and content in my own little corner of the world.