Oh yeah! I remember everything you're talking about! Remember those dreaded consultation reports with 5 carbon copies? I was working at Glendale Adventist Medical Center when the got their first Lanier Text Editor, and it felt like entering a ****pit or something. As I recall, it was all one piece - keyboard attached to everything else. One night I was working and drinking my usual mug of Constant Comment tea with honey and spilled it into the keyboard. ACKKKK! I was a young thing of about 19 and was sure they were going to charge me to replace the whole darn machine! I still spill things in my keyboard (I know, I know, but some habits are just impossible to break!), the last time it was a whole bottle of water in my new Goldtouch. My son the computer guy just rolled his eyes when I asked if I could dry it out or something. "No, Mom, just order another one." So I did. I am drinking coffee and working this morning, just taking a break to check the list. I have been doing this for about 32 years now, since I was in high school. I started out on a manual Olympia, working at home for a local neurologist. While I was in high school I had worked as a summer intern at a local hospital as a medical records clerk and noticed that the transcriptionists drove nicer cars and had better clothes than the clerks, so I told them I wanted to learn. Those were the days when they just sat you down in the department and let you learn by doing! It has been a great career, although it is a real love/hate relationship at times. I work for Medquist Sacramento now and feel like I am having my cake and eating it, too. Great company to work for, and I really like the dictators from the Bay Area accounts that I work on; they talk talk talk and pretty good English, too! Well, gotta get back to work! Duty calls, Best to all, Kim

Hey guys! I am so glad I found this board! I just started school for medical office assistant and transcription is most of the course. I am now taking med term I, A&P, and Keyboarding. The keyboarding is getting me cause my fingers go haywire and miss all the right keys....HAHAHA So far the med term is easy.. u know the WR's and CF's. So dont be suprised if I come on asking you pro's for help..LOL I decided at 32 and after losing 92 pounds in almost 4 months that I needed to find a career. Before surgery at 313 lbs. I would have NEVER went anywhere much less to college! I feel so energized and not afraid of people or what they think of me now. It was kinda fun going and not feeling like the biggest girl in class. The funny thing is they make us wear scrubs to class, 3 yrs ago when I was CNA I wore size 3X now I wear a XL top and L bottom! They made us try them on to make sure they fit and I was standing in the schools bathroom just crying my eyes out... LOL... I was getting funny looks needless to say. I had to explain why I was having such a fit and they were alll just shocked. Anyway enough of my blabber..Take care all! Lots of Love Karin

Hello to everyone. I do hope we do get a lot of us posting on this board. Let me tell you a little about myself. I live in Kansas. Have to have a "revision" done and there are no doctors that I know of that do "revisions" (Had a Mason gastric bypass back in 1979) in Kansas except the doctors in Junction City. However, they declined to take me because they would prefer that I go to a large hospital to have it done in case there were any complications with my comorbidities. Their hospital is pretty much small-town. So I found my surgeon in Omaha, Nebraska. Have surgery scheduled March 1st, pending insurance approval (waiting answer any minute now) and finishing my pretests the second week of February. So at least until I hear back from insurance, I can't get "happy" just yet. I have been overweight most all my life. I weighed 414 at doctor on Dec. 22nd at my initial consultation visit. He asked me to lose 20 pounds on Atkins before surgery, and so I have been doing the Atkins (for the most part), and have lost 23 pounds so far. Would like to lose another 10 before surgery. That ought to make the doctor happy! I am 53 years old, single, have 2 grown children and 4 wonderful granddaughters, ages 11, 6, 5, and 2. Last year I gave up gardening and started limiting the time the kids came over because it took so much out of me to keep up with them... I realized at that point, I needed to make a drastic change. For me this surgery is all about me getting my life back! I can't hardly walk or breathe without shortness of breath! So I am very determined to see this surgery through and get on the other side and MAKE IT WORK! About my last chance I think. I presently to transcription work for a company out of Atlanta, GA, called Wordzxpressed, Inc. We do mostly office notes and letters. I love the work because we have our own dictators assigned to us for work every day. It gets to be easy that way. I also do some team leader duties of making work assignments at times. Also I have done QA work. My goal, however, after the surgery is to really find a new career! I want to be around people more and I have been sitting at home transcribing/working with very little contact with the outside world. I wish I knew what to go into, but whatever it is, it has to be more people oriented!!! Well I better close for now. It is after midnight and need to call it a night! Hope to hear from you!! Susan S.

I'm a newbie. I have only been doing it for about two weeks and so far I have just transcribed for a Indian Rheumatologist. Now how she talks is funny to me. I have trouble understanding her accent. Like when she dictates her ordered lab she will say them as Hatchy which is her H and Ene is how she shes says E. Oh here is something funny. I don't know all the lab procedures yet so she is always throwing in a new one and I get it wrong the first time. So today she dictated that she was ordering a SMAC for the patient. I did not type SMAC I typed smack like it sounds. She brought me the dication and said "Mercy, we do not smack our patients".

Hi, my name is Dana. I have been a medical transcriptionist for 15 years and I was a unit clerk in hospitals for 12 years before that. I used to work for years for a big hospital and then we were "outsourced." They got rid of our whole department. We were not a money making part of the hospital "team." I now work for a small private company and have even been given a promotion to doing QA. I really love my bosses, great people. The woman who started my company, Healthline, Inc, is a transcriptionist who started in her home 30 years ago and now there is a huge office with over 80 employees. If anyone is looking for a job, we hire people who live in most places in the United States, as our system is internet based and all work is done on the internet. My mom was a transcriptionist before she retired and she tells me all the horror stories of typing on typewriters and having to start all over again when a doctor would say, "go back and add...." Luckily by the time I started transcription it was on the first computers. Though I used to have to type on a typewriter as a unit clerk in the ER of a hospital so I know what that was like. Glad you all started this. There must be others of us out there. I have a friend who has had WLS, but she does not go on this site. I will have to tell her about it. She just had a hernia repair and tummy tuck done last week as she has been at goal. Talk to you all later, I have to get back to work..... Dana in Phoenix, AZ