Sunday, September 02, 2007

Anatomy of a Lousy Labor Day Call

Nothing like a black weekend to ruin a holiday weekend. Read on:

Saturday, 7am.
I arrived at the hospital. The radio started playing a song I really like so when I got out of my car in the parking lot, I kept the keys in the ignition to keep listening to the song as I got my belongings together. But then I slammed the door shut ... with the keys still in the ignition. After ten minutes of prying at every car door and worrying about how this could ruin my morning, I remembered I had a spare key in my wallet. Potential bombshell averted.

Saturday, 7am – Sunday, 3pm.
I endured a grueling night of overnight call. On top of getting slammed with patient admissions – apparently Labor Day weekend drives people to the emergency room in hordes – I had to cross-cover 21 other medicine patients. Nothing more enjoyable than being kept awake all night by a patient going into respiratory failure with no urine output, especially when the sign-out reported "Nothing to do". While that patient didn't die, my cell phone did.

Sunday, 3pm.
Done with my night of call! I walked to my car, turned the key, and heard nothing. No engine sounds, no nothing. In that effort to rescue my locked-in keys the previous morning, I had forgotten to turn off my headlights. With a dead cell phone and no other car in sight to help me, I trudged back to the hospital in order to call AAA.

Sunday, 3pm – 5pm.
I waited alongside my car, with nothing to eat or read, wearing goofy green scrubs, for two hours. Just as I was about to return to the hospital to call AAA again -- what a day to have my cell phone battery drained -- they showed up. One new battery and $120 later, I was on my way back home.

Talk about a comedy of misfortunes ... at least I have this upcoming golden weekend to look forward to. There are very few ways to have those ruined.

1 comment:

Sara said...

Sorry it sucks. Internal medicine is like that though. What did you like about it before?