Self-employed IT consultant. Definitely got the T-shirt. Had a customer the other day who said her husband had been pointing at being self-employed as being great. I stated straight out that if you're not insanely self-motivated, it's NOT the right job for you. She agreed - she prefers to go to a job where she's told what her guidelines are, and just do the work.
Don't feel bad about relocating. Houston has some of the best hospitals and medical people in the world, for example (it's just hot, humid, and about to be underwater). If you're trying to 1) keep working, and 2) keep your daughter's treatment going, then you need to look at some other options. The first thing to do is find out where your daughter can keep getting treatment. That immediately reduces your data set. Include the local environment as part of it, of course. Once you have those locations, you can do checking on weather, jobs available, and so forth. I wish you the best, and hope you can get your employment worked out, and a good treatment (hopefully with a long term fix) for your daughter. (Edit - be sure to talk to your wife. If you couch it as being a way to work and still take care of your daughter, you'll immediately get her attention, and you can get her involved in the process. Maybe she'll refuse to move to Dallas or Houston, but might be willing to move to Atlanta.)
IT consultant here, traveling all over Europe. No experience with heavy equipment (unless you classify mainframes as such ) but lots of experience with what a travel job does for your family life. It's hard not to be there when important things happen, and living in hotel rooms gets boring fast. It pays well, and you get to do interesting work (in my case), but it kills your social life. I reckon that will not be different for e.g. construction or mechanics jobs requiring you to be on-site.
