Dr. Andy

Reflections on medicine and biology among other things

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Death, taxes and pager batteries

Why is it that pager batteries only fail at night, when you are on call.

After getting into bed at 11:30 after going to the Pirates game, I was awakened at 11:45 by the "low battery" beep. At this point, I still get a big adrenaline rush when the pager goes off. Maybe with a few more years as an attending where the worst it can mean is talking on the phone* and that will go away, but for now I'm awake for a 1/2 hour calming down.

Often when the battery gets low the beep is only every few hours, but it went off again right after I got back to sleep. So I went downstairs and got a displacement. Somhow I managed to set the alarm for 2AM (I kid you not) so I got another jolt awake, this time convinced it was a real page.

*As a fellow, every page carried with it the possibility of having to head into the ED and see someone.

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