A little about me

I posted my blog address on www.MTstars.com today and someone suggested I put a little info about myself so I'm going to go ahead and do that now. I'm a pretty boring person so don't expect anything spectacular.

I got married shortly after high school, like two minutes afterwards, and am still married to the same guy. We just celebrated year 14 of our jail sentence back on January 18 and hopefully we'll be married another 30 or 40 years because I'm far too lazy to find me another husband to train, I'm still trying to get this one trained. Okay, sorry, I should remember most people who will read this don't know me and so wont know I'm just kidding, sort of, so here's a hint, if it sounds mean or sarcastic it's not meant to be mean, I just have an odd sense of humor. I cuss a lot too but will try and curb that tendency here so I don't offend anyone too terrible much. I also say anyhoo and terribly a lot, sorry, I'm just not creative enough to come up with new and interesting sayings.

My hubby, Mark, and I have two kids, Jay who will turn 8 on May 25 and Caitlin who will be 10 in July. They are both perfectly rotten children, as in good rotten, not the kind you want to smack in the Walmart check out lines because they are brats, mine are the fun kind. They are outside right now jumping on the trampoline and being little acrobats. They run in every once in a while to tell me to watch, which is code for look at me attempt to kill myself. I tell them okay but never watch because it ties my stomach up in knots. That is one of the pitfalls of doing medical transcription, I always compare what they are doing with reports I've done and so I'm always absolutely paranoid about them breaking their necks, arms, noses, legs, toes, whatever. Brain damage is always a constant fear of mine, not that I have anxiety or anything, just a firm grasp of all the ways kids hurt themselves because I type all the ER reports.

I currently work for the big MQ, which I probably shouldn't mention because I will probably bitch about them from time to time and I really don't want to get a phone call from my boss. "Shannon, we hear you are mad at our QA experts. Please don't complain about them on your blog, we have proper channels for that." Oh well, I'll take my chances. I started for MQ back on October 5, 1999, which works out to just about forever. I actually like my job a lot for the most part, but I am actually having a bit of burnout right now which tends to happen about this time of year, when it starts getting warm I start getting really antsy and contemplate going to work at McDonald's or a gas station or something, but then it passes and I'm happy again.

I remember when I was about 9 my mom had gotten information about working as a medical transcription and it had always been one of those jobs I thought would be so interesting to have. Then after high school I got married (remember, two minutes after) and went to Navy bootcamp. That didn't work out and I ended up coming home. My hubby and I moved to a teensy tiny town in Idaho and I went to work at the local hospital doing laundry and housekeeping. Then on a whim I enrolled in an at-home training course for medical transcription with At-Home Professions. When the one MT at the hospital heard I was doing that she hired me as an apprentice (damn lucky for me) and that's how I started this whole journey into medical transcription. When I started we typed on type writers with white out, talk about fun, and we used the little mini tapes. The hospital then went through a sort of restructuring and the head MT got sent to work at home so I was outta my first MT job.

Then I sold insurance, waitressed, stacked wood at a lumber mill, and a couple of other odd jobs for a few years. We moved, had a baby (my daughter) and then I found an ad in the paper for an MT at the hospital. It was for radiology, which I had never done, but I went ahead and applied anyway. The boss had a sort of sense of humor and gave me a tape from their one and only female radiology doc who talked faster than any person I had ever heard. I got maybe the first three words, an occasional and, and the thank you at the end. I sat their stupefied at the end with like six words out of the entire dictation typed. I wanted to cry. Anne, the boss, called me into her office and asked me how that was. I told her basically it sucked and she asked me when could I start. I was so surprised but so thankful for the job. She later told me she hired me because I was the first applicant who had actually sat through the entire dictation, the rest had gotten up and walked out in the middle, frustrated by the dumb tape. I probably would have gotten up and walked out too, but I was too busy being absolutely fascinated by the fact that anyone could actually talk so fast and have it mean something.

I worked for that hospital for a year and then I found out that I was pregnant with my son. My husband and I worked different shifts so we wouldn't have to have my daughter in daycare for too long, not because we thought it was bad to have her there, I'm not one of those who worries about my kids being raised by someone else, I'm one of those who worries about the fact that I'm spending so much on it, damn daycare's expensive. Then about a year into working at the hospital I found out I was pregnant with my son. I knew there was no way we'd be able to afford daycare for two kids, even being part time like it was. I talked with my boss and explained the situation to her and she agreed that it would be okay for me to apply with the company that the hospital outsourced all their transcription to (besides the radiology and pathology that I typed) which happened to be MQ that I still work for today.

I started on October 5, 1999, and have been with them ever since. I started out on a typewriter with mini-tapes, went to a computer with mini-tapes, then to computer with a dictaphone, and finally to doing everything via computer. It's been so awesome being able to work at home. As much as I get burned out sometimes, I can't imagine doing anything else, unless of course I could make enough money from blogging or if I won the lottery, then I'd so be done with transcription, not out of disloyalty or anything like that, just mainly out of laziness, it'd be wonderful not to have a schedule.

Anyway, that's a really long story, and I'm glad it's done. Now I'm off to get some burritos for supper. Ta ta.

If you'd like to chat or ask me a question or whatever you can go to my MySpace here or you can email me here. You can also visit my other blogs here and here. If you have any questions or you have an idea for something for me to write about go ahead and drop me a line, I love hearing from people. Okay, now I'm off to get some lazy-Saturday supper.