Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep

The other day my beeper went off at 4AM. As it turned out the ER doctor just had a quick question about a broken foot we'll probably see in the next few days. I didn't even have to get out of bed. Shoulda, coulda, wish I woulda, gone right back to sleep. I don't get paged that often in the middle of the night and that's one of the advantages of working in a small town. We're not the kind of town where people get shot; unless they're not wearing orange in November. We're not the kind of community where people drive around at high speed late at night. We're the kind of community where people go to bed at night, sleep, and stay put. Including me. Even so, the beeper remains a fact of life although many docs are giving them up and relying solely on their cell phones. I still prefer a beeper because it gives me a head's up before I get on the phone.

Years ago I remember when the neighbor across the street, an intern at UCLA, got his first beeper. It was a voice audible device that basically beeped and then you heard something like, "Paging Dr. Freeman. Dr. Freeman, please call the hospital." Once he arranged to have the hospital operator page him during Shabbat dinner so his mother could hear her son, the doctor, get paged. I think she cried she was so overcome with pride. And I'll admit, at 16 or so, I thought it was pretty cool as well. (As I recall, the young intern thought it was extremely cool!)

Like a whole lot of docs in this country, I'm getting too old for that beeper crap. Not that I have a choice. It's part of the shtick at my hospital: "Wanna work here? Grab a beeper." Problem is, often times when my beeper goes off at 4AM I can't get back to sleep. Instead I lay there and think of this thing or that. The worst of it is when I have a particularly difficult case I'm struggling with-- bad injury, bad outcome, bad attitude, bad vibe-- somehow it's then, at 4AM, that my head decides to start the internal debate about what to do, should have done, will do next, will never do again, and so forth. It's particularly maddening because my own brain starts practicing willful disobedience and disrespect towards its owner. I tell it to relax and go back to sleep. Ha! I tell it we will do something about it after a couple more hours of sleep, Double ha! I tell it there's nothing wrong and everything will be fine. Nothing but sass!

For now the beeper has to stay. But if it goes off at 4AM again any time soon I think I know how I'll handle that disorderly bed-partner brain of mine. Next time I'm gonna reach over to the night stand and grab my copy of Strunk and White's. That'll get the noisy bastard back to sleep!