Long time gone

My mom gets on to me all the time about not posting to my blog. She's right. It's been almost 8 months since I've posted. Much of the reason is because I've been posting in the trucker's forum about our trials and tribulations with Alan's truck driving job. He hates driving a truck and he especially despises working for Covenant. Unfortunately, it's a job which is more that a lot of people can say they have and until he's been working for them for a year, which comes up next month, he can't get with any other company.

Since my last post I've gone from Birmingham (where sales were dismal) to Huntsville (where sales were a lot better) and I've been in Raleigh, North Carolina now since May. I've done pretty well here so far and the past two weeks have been my highest earning weeks in the year and a half working with Air Photo. So that's a good thing. It means that Alan and I are starting to catch up financially after several set-backs.

Since the beginning of the year, I've taken two weeks off to take Mom to Florida to recover from extensive chemo and radiation therapy for the cancer on her neck. It was nice to get away from everything for a little while and Tammie flew down to join us. It was the first time just the three of us had been together since as long as I can remember.

Then I took another week off in June to stay with Mom while she recovered from surgery where they removed many of the lymph nodes in her neck. She's doing better and slowing getting her strength back. Soon she'll start another round of chemo to battle cancer on another area of her body. I don't know how she does it but my mom has always been a strong person. I've been trying to convince her to come stay with me in NC as Duke Medicine is one of the top rated cancer centers in the country but it is very difficult for her to leave the doctors she has come to trust which is understandable. I just wish circumstances were different so I could be with her.

Since January I have been taking classes to become a medical transcriptionist. It is normally two-years' worth of instruction but since it is self-paced, I have been getting through the coursework fairly quickly. I am on my next-to-last course (pharmacology) having already taken medical terminology, laboratory and diagnostics, human diseases, and anatomy and physiology. I have one more course, Medical Transcription Technology, to go before I start the three phases of actual transcription - beginning, intermediate and advanced. During that part I also take a couple more courses in grammar and punctuation and also the medicolegal aspects of the medical record. Also somewhere in there I do an internship which will give me experience needed to get a job with a transcription company.

Shane and Catherine are now in Petersburg, VA until December while Shane is going to command school. Cat is pregnant with their second baby. It's a girl and Sarah Elizabeth is due in September. So far so good with the pregnancy with the exception that Cat's sugar was to high during her last checkup so they will have to run a test to check her for prenatal diabetes.

And that's all my news for now.