1 hurricane in 30 years or every year. I'd take Texas :)

• Need advice from a few Texans. - M
  • New Braunfels area - MTinTexas
  • Fort Worth/Dallas - ginny
  • Lufkin Texas or to be more specific Hudson. sm - ETMT
  • MOVING TO TEXAS - KAT
    • 1 hurricane in 30 years or every year. I'd take Texas :) - sm
    • What a generalization.... - TM
  • I live in Houston on Lake Houston - (sm) - txmt
    • do you have stanley photography do your school pictures? nm - curious
    • It's not that bad. I can get to my mom's - TM
      • It's about a foot above normal. I will watch for you in my backyard - LOL - txmt
        • Is it really? That's great! So did you stay - TM
          • The trees are the main concern in a hurricane (sm) - txmt
    • OOPS - meant 15 minutes FROM shopping. - txmt
  • I live in Granbury, TX. - hl
    • I'm in fort worth! - ginny
      • Sunny and HOT!!! - hl
    • I can tell you that if you move to - TM
      • Texas Hill Country - wordwoman
        • Canyon Lake is gorgeous. We go there - TM

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Now it seems, I'm just scraping by, juggling the utility bills and paying whichever one has sent me the 24-hour disconnect notice this month; it's become a grim miserable job compared to what it was.  I'm nearing retirement age, but I doubt retirement is going to be in my future for a very long time.

The single worst thing that ever happened to us was going from the gross line count to the character count, and not adjusting the line rate upward to parity -- not to mention the adjustments that should have been made to accommodate all the extra time spent struggling to make sense of huge increase in ESL dictations that has occurred over the last 15 years, and of course there should have been COLAs as well, which we all know has not happened.

In the 1980s, with the advent of powerful and affordable PCs, free lance transcription became much more common.  So if you were experienced, disciplined and organized, you could be much better off economically by working for yourself -- although there were definitely advantages to working in-hospital.  There were great benefits and the salary was indeed enough to support a small family (albeit very modestly.) 

For a number of years during that time, many of us worked part time in the hospital for benefits, but made our real money at home.

But in my case, the time came when it just made no economic sense to work in-housel, I was better buying off buying private insurance for major medical care, tax-deferred annuities, and self-insuring the little stuff. 

I would just pick up tapes from the hospital every morning, and drop off the work (which I printed out) from the day before.

I usually had 24 hours to transcribe tapes which I did during school hours, when things were peaceful and quiet. 

I transcribed a couple thousand GROSS lines day.  Every single character line counted, so by taking advantage of headers/footers, creative macros, word expansions, etc., I really boosted my productivity far beyond to what I could do in-house on the self-correcting Selectric, Wang or Mag Card, or whatever 10-years behind technology was currently being used, plus all the office distractions and politics, and I definitely did not to have to work 24/7 to earn a good living. (Oh how I loved WP5.1!)

In fact, 2000 gross lines a day, 5 days a week at 10 cents a line (courier 10-pitch font, one-inch margins) was very very do-able for an experienced productive acute-care MT, provided she had good equipment, good reference books, and stayed focused.  It would take about 5-6 hours a day to get that amount of work done.  So figure the math out for yourselves, that's just a tad under $50,000 a year, certainly not a high standard of living in those days but adequate when it meant you could stay home and be actually be a full time parent when your children were home from school, and very comfortable, if you were married with a working spouse, or had rerliable child support, or social security for your children (if you were widowed.)

If you chose to work some weekends and evenings, it was not that all that difficult to hit that $75,000 a year mark, which I did for a couple of years so I was able to pay the tuition at a good boarding school -- and cruelly thwarted my teen-aged son's only ambition in life, which was to become a high school drop-out.

Things have gotten bad, no doubt about that, and the worst part of it is, is that most of the big MTSOs are still charging the hospitals as much as we used to earn, and sometimes even more, but the MT is no longer earning it, and often can't get enough work to meet the line counts required by the MTSOs for benefits (although the cost of those benefits are reflected in the cost charged to the hospital.) 

I don't know what the answer is, as the electronic immigrant is such a huge threat.

It's pretty darn awful, and I feel very very bad for those of you starting out in this field, and I do hope things change for you (and that someday soon I can retire.)

And the point that the person made is that that she was worth $75,000 a year, not necessarily that she was getting it or could get it, and I absolutely agree with her.  This is a hard tough job if it's done right -- it's mentally tiring, it's hard on your back, your hands, your neck (and your behind.)

It requires a lot of time -- it requires focus, you must stay alert, and must give 100% of your attention to what you are doing 100% of the time, it takes education and brains -- and now a word of truth which my 35+ years experience gives me the right to say aloud -- it's not fulfilling, wonderful, lovable and enjoyable, it's often as repetitious and tedious as an assembly line but infinitely more frustrating.

PS: I recall one of my colleagues from those early years of my career, now gone from this earth, telling me that the 1960s were really the "fat" years, that things actually began to decline salary-wise, in real dollars, in the 1970s. 

We were in Cancun when Wilma hit.  Cancun will be quite some time before it is what it was pre Wilma.  Currently, the Myan Riveria is in pretty good shape.  Word is Cancun has 2/3 of the rooms open and beaches are still being worked on and dredging the ocean for sand to replace and of course, the major loss of greenery in plants and forest.  Cozemel still does not have beachs, pools, or much else for that matter even now.

You can view some pix pre, during and after Wilma here:  http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=6ater84.xr3iv10&Uy=62dqnx&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

Just for some other information.  When Hurricane Rita hit in Texas, i.e. Jasper, Beaumont area, these people were not prepared.  They were not prepared because hurricanes do not come in that far inland.  The Jasper area is one of the areas where most hurricane victims evacuate too.  There are people in that area that are still without power including elderly people and children.  Most of the surrounding areas (Pineland, Rosevine, Hemphill) are retirement areas.  These are also low income areas as well.  These people definitely would not have expected the hurricane to effect them in the way that it did, but it did.

Also, people in Lufkin and Nacogdoches, Texas were effected from it as well.  Again, a hurricane never has come close to these areas and these areas are also where evacuees come.  During the time we had evacuees from Galveston, Beaumont, Houston, and still the ones we had from Louisiana drained the resources that we did have here (not saying anything negative by this – just a statement).  None of the businesses could get trucks in to deliver gas, food, ice, water, etc.  When we did get gas delivered, the lines were so long that people were waiting 9-10 hours to get gas and of course by the time most got up there, it was gone again.  This went on for several days.  Even the Wal-Mart here and in Nacogdoches was only able to be open a few hours a day and for the first few days after the hurricane because of the amount of extra people in these areas, they finally had to limit the number of people they were allowing in the store at a time.

Some of you say, people should be prepared.  I do agree and especially more so if you live in a coastal area.  However, these people affected in the areas I mentioned above do not live on the coast; however, were heavily impacted by this natural disaster.  You are saying these people don't deserver help?!  Well let me tell you this.  When we had a lot of LA evacuees here, FEMA stepped in and for a lot (not all of course) they received $2000.00 for help with housing, another $600.00 for food, and there $400.00 for something else (honestly do not remember what it was).

However, my mother and father-in-law who are elderly went 14 days without power, lost everything in the freezer and refrigerator, and they are also raising 2 of their grandchildren (both young teenagers).  They were unable to get FEMA to help with anything. 

I guess the point is this.  Before spouting off about who needs to do what or who the government does or does not need to help (or where you tax monies go), you might want to think about the fact that this was a natural disaster and therefore, no one can ever really be prepared for one.  I hope none of you ever have to deal with anything like this.  It is not a pretty site in this area right now.  Clean up is still going on.  There are still trees down on houses and cars.  How would you feel if this were you? 

By the way, yes I do feel that my family was very lucky to come through it unscathed; however, some were not so lucky.

Just my 2 cents.

How can we find out and how can we help?

I think she is thinking of the one in Austin, I believe.  Don't remember when it was, but I do remember someone shooting at the students on campus, was it University of Texas?

Stay away from the D/FW area and Houston - too much traffic and illegals.  Drugs, gangs, etc.  Try to find a small town or country setting.  It is HOT and the concrete of the cities just increases that heat.  Also the pollution in these areas is bad so if you have any type of lung or breathing problems - stay away.  However, if you do not mind sitting in traffic for an hour to get to a job 10 miles away - then you should move to a big city.  If you are planning to work from home, remember that internet is not available everywhere in Texas.  Personally, I wouldn't move to Texas - I would choose SC or FL - much better options.

kat

I think we may have worked for the same lady!  She never had the AC on in her office except for a unit in the room with the phone equipment to keep it cool, so my husband used to say that it must be the heat frying her brain cells.  If it isn't the same lady, it's a real clone.  I don't work for her anymore, either!