The post-call triad

During residency these days, the only true overnight call is in the ICU. But it's serious: every third night in the hospital, working 20 hrs, maybe an hour or two of sleep, and then almost always a full 8 hours the next day. You gotta stay for rounds, and then finish your work: pre round from 6-8, 8-12 rounds, 12-2 finish up stuff.

Anyway, the post call feeling is so awful, it's like an illness. So, we came up with a pathognomonic constellation of symptoms.

Behold, the Post call triad:

1) Somnolence
2) Flatulence
3) Inability to handle secretions

After a while, it developed into a pentad:

1) Somnolence
2) Flatulence
3) Inability to handle secretions
4) Slurred speech
5) Priapism (where appropriate)

I'm almost glad to discover the consistency of the syndrome, seeing as it occurs during at home pager call as well. Almost glad. Almost.

Comments

tarah said…
Sounds rough, darling. Hope you're finding peace and rest betwixt shifts!
October 1, 2008 at 5:49 PM
Anonymous said…
Sounds about right. I can relate. Only after spending a night with crying kid
October 2, 2008 at 3:29 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And a cherry on top

After not having written for over 2 years, I was suddenly overcome by an urge to write something about my day.  That's how awesome my day was. To start, I had to deliver news of two different cancers today.  It is not a rarity that I deliver bad news in my field, but twice in one day is a bit of a bad streak; although, from what I am told, these things come in threes, so I'm like a spider in my web waiting for a unsuspecting victim #3 right now.  It's not a rarity, but today's constituents were just outliers. First, was a patient who need to have had her test 15 years ago, but refused and refused, until finally, got hauled in, and wouldn't you know it, had a nasty mass.  While trying to get around it, get biopsies, assess it, the family member and ride was, I guess, stewing in the waiting room about how long the wait was turning out to be, and when was finally shown to the patient's bedside, engaged in a raging rant, accused us of running a sham busines...
Read more

Mommy wars

I have not written in a while, mostly because I've been uninspired. To write something good, you have to be in the midst of some sort of angst, I'm convinced of that. Otherwise, everything sounds canned. What did I have to anguish about? I like my job, I love my kid, I hate the neighborhood - but how much can I really whine about that? All equals lack of posts. But something happened last week that ignited my passions more than the average bit. And forgive me if I have discussed this before, and am repeating myself. So, I'm at the hospital rounding. I run into a fellow young doc from my company. Turns out, he just had a baby. We're both sitting over open charts, pens in hand, making co-worker smalltalk in low tones. Oh, is it your first baby? Oh, it's your third baby! Oh, how very fun, congratulations! Is your wife also physician? No, he says, she is in finance. She was working her tail off with the first two, and never saw them, so now, with the thi...
Read more

A perfect storm

Every time we go away these days, there is an unavoidable musical chairs game of keys.  Somebody gets the mailbox key, someone else gets my house keys so they can come and feed Blueberry, hubby's house keys get left at my parents' so they can use the car, etc etc etc.  So, it's no small wonder that one of these days something would go awry, as things tend to do around me. We just came back from a lovely long weekend at a lakeside golf resort, where we took walks in the woods, ate barbeque pork nachos, soaked in an infinity pool, and watched my friend get married.  I had taken a day off on Monday so I could relax, and catch up with Munchkin, who stayed back with my parents.  We had left Hubby's car at my office parking lot, thinking that we would pick it up on the way back.  We pulled into our driveway, and Hubby exclaimed: "what the fuck!! Where is my car!"  and then, as we both realized that it was still in the parking lot, we both said, "Oh, fuck!...
Read more