I told George I should rename my blog "A View from a Broad", and he said it wasn't politically correct.  I knew he was kidding because there's no such thing as "political correctness" in this house.

Once upon a time one of the bosses in my office told me it wasn't politically correct to have a New Testament on my bookshelf, along with all my transcription word books.  I told her there was no such thing as "political correctness" in my cubicle.  My feeling was, if anyone got offended because I had a New Testament on my word book shelf, too bad.  After all, my word book shelf wasn't public property.  Besides, I could use the excuse that I had to look names up in it.  There might not be a lot of people named "Onesimus" out there, but even if there's only one I still need to know how to spell it properly.  I'd have a problem with Maher-shalal-hashbaz, however, since that one's in the Old Testament.  This has become a moot point since I now work at home, and I will have on my desk shelves what books I please.

Back in the office where I used to work, I would sometimes bring in my Walkman, along with some CDs.  If anyone had listened to some of them, they'd either (A) not be at all surprised, or (b) surprised at my choice of music.  Let's see...Tom Lehrer.  Good stuff, but not exactly "politically correct" in this day and age, but I don't care.  I think what the New York Times said about Tom Lehrer sums it up rather succinctly:  "Mr. Lehrer's muse (is) not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste." Another favorite is "Revival in Belfast," which is original  Christian music from a church in Northern Ireland.  Wonderful stuff.  This one wouldn't surprise anyone.  Yet another favorite is Mark Cohn, whose rendition of "Walking in Memphis" is the better of the two versions I've heard. Mostly good music, except that the last one on the CD, "True Companion," isn't the love song it first sounds like; this is a song about a man obsessed with marrying a particular woman, and he doesn't care if she doesn't feel the same way he does.  I still like it.  Maybe I´m strange.

Now, though, I can't listen to anything except dictations while I'm working.  I just finished an account with some truly horrendous dictating providers, and what's sad is that one of the worst was a native English speaker.  You'd think that someone with enough university degrees to be a nurse practitioner would have halfway decent diction, but I guess I was expecting too much.  Her provider number coming up in my queue was enough to make me want to scream, run away, and resign, not necessarily in that order.  Some of the providers for whom English is a second (or third, etc.) language had better diction than this nurse practitioner did.  Another nurse practitioner I transcribed apparently thought we medical transcriptionists don't know how to spell.  While I didn't mind her spelling obscure terms, I know how to spell "penicillin", "Carolina" (North and South), and even "eye".  Trust me:  I have heard of all of those, and know how to spell them.  There was a psychiatrist who always pronounced omeprazole, generic Prilosec, as "omeprazolone."  It's a good thing I knew what he was talking about.  He had the psychotropic drugs down; but when it came to drugs for hypertension or heartburn, he had some of the strangest pronunciations for those.  Still, I'd only typed about 100,000 of his dictations (not really, but it sure seemed like it sometimes) so I knew what he was talking about.  That kind of thing goes with the medical transcription territory, however.  Back when I still worked in an office, I took some paperwork up to one of the wards.  While I was up there, I heard one of the technicians ask a doctor how to spell "omeprazole."  The doctor misspelled it.  I said, "Excuse me, that's o-m-e-p-r-a-z-o-l-e." The doctor pointed at me and told the technician, "What she said."  Thanks.  I'll take what credit I can get.

Working at home has its advantages.  I can work in jeans and old T-shirts, or shorts in summer.  I can drink my coffee or eat at my desk, but if I spill and ruin my keyboard, it's my nickel.  That's okay - it teaches me to watch what I'm doing.  I can have what books I want for reference, and no one borrows them.  While I didn't mind loaning out my books when I worked in the office, I had a rule that if you borrow it, put it back.  One of the coders lost his lending library privileges because he'd borrow my books and not put them back.  Granted, my books were well labeled, but since I was the only one in the office with a decent abbreviation reference I wanted to make sure it didn't sprout legs, if you catch my drift.  I also have a copy of Pyle's "Current Medical Terminology", which is an excellent reference for any medical transcriptionist, except that mine is missing 30 pages right in the middle of the Ps.  I didn't find this out until after it had been doused with iced tea from a leaky bottle, either, so if I want to look something up that turns out to be missing, there's always the internet. 

Medical transcription is a challenging field that can also be a great deal of fun if you know where to look for it.  I encountered this statement in a report dictated by a podiatrist:  "The patient's umbilical hernia was repaired by naval surgeons in Korea."  I saw this headline in a paper devoted to military medical records processing:  "Records Missing from Navel Hospital."  I guess that's where the aforementioned patient had his umbilical hernia repaired.  One of my favorites from trainee days was, "The patient underwent humerus x-rays, and was determined to have a fracture."  This sentence is correct, but the phrase "humerus x-rays" conjures up some interesting mental pictures.  So does "After a joint...(long pause)... meeting with the Dental Facial Deformities Board..."  Made me wonder what was really happening in the Oral Maxillofacial Surgery Department. 

Now I'm starting a new account.  Wish me luck.