A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry
I signed on for my normal shift at Midnight and got immediately hit with an unknown hospital, uknown dictator from outside my CCM's 'book of work.' I couldn't understand the dictator who was a ESL, thick accent interspersed with serial "mumbles with thick accent." Looked for an old report, put in all the correct information, even tried adjusting it several times -- came up with no old reports.
At this point, mental incapacitation seemed to set in; I seemed to go into an "altered state of consciousness." It felt like --- say your pet of 20 years died, and you cried for hours and hours --- how you feel after that --- you feel like you are floating in space. Your body has some kind of chemical cascade reaction which sends you to "LaLa Land" -- for real. You feel as though somebody slipped you a pill of some sort --- surrounded you with a veil of cheeseclothe -- and nothing outside the cheeseclothe is real. You float. You feel totally detached from what we "foolishly" call "reality" (hey man -- if this is reality --- I'll takea good ole psychotic hallucination any day of the week).
And then, I did the UNTHINKABLE THING. I turned to my computer and I hit "BREAK." I sent the mumbling Indian back to from"whence she came" and I signed off my shift. I just stopped working. DUH. I just stopped.
I must have hit some "kind of a wall." I simply could NOT do it.
I wonder what the consequences of this will be, if any. I wrote my CCM and told her I "couldn't do it, didn't know what to do, but there didn't seem to be much sense in sitting there and staring at the computer screen if I couldn't "do it."
My brain felt like a computer that had been given too many sets of conflicting instructions at one time; and my brain did what my computer does in that case; it shut down. Boy did that feel a lot better than 30 seconds earlier when it was franctically "searching for a solution where there is no good solution."
I must be at the end of my "so-called rope," because I feel like I'm losing the capacity to "care" -- which is very unlike me. I'm an inveterate worrier, generally, and hyper-conscientious --- always trying to do my 'very best,' etc. etc. etc.
I don't even feel "badly" about having abandoned my shift. It's totally weird -- it's so not me.
I wonder what kind of "warnings/expressions of opprobrium" I wll receive, if any. Or will I just find "my posterior-side" out on the "pavement" (so to speak) and get to start picking through the outdoor trashcans for leftover bits of McDonald's burgers -- along with the other neighborhood castaways?"
Oh well -- I am so fundamentally BURNED OUT with this situation, I can't even CARE any more. Am I bititer? I don't know. I feel too brain-dead to know. Maybe I'm about to start laughing hysterically.
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