Up the creek, without a paddle....

My worst nightmare came true last monday. I came home from clinic after a crazy busy day to find myself being paged right back to the ER on the other side of town. Alas, I was on call yet again...

I had enough time to briefly walk the doggies before their bladders exploded (rather embarassing for a urologist owner...), then quickly headed back into traffic.

Much to my horror and dismay, I discovered that I had accidentally left my cell phone at home. This would normally not be such a stressful event, but I was on call, meaning that I got paged multiple times to a couple of different ERs not to mention a few patient calls during the 20 minutes it took me to drive over to the first ER. And I could not call any of these people back right away!!!

I was really distressed. I absolutely HATE to answer pages late (chalk it up to my obsessive compulsive nature), and during the drive, I was just cursing myself. What if this was a really important call? What if this was a true emergency? And how in hell did doctors manage to be on call before the advent of the cell phone????

I remember getting my very first cell phone at the start of my intern year. That was back in 1995, and how things have changed in the interim. That cell phone was HUGE! I remember thinking at the time that it was so "portable" and "convenient", though it weighed about 3 lbs and was the same size as my cordless home phone. I remember jogging with it and using it both as a phone and a hand weight.

I am not one to jaw incessantly on my cell phone, and I have definitely overheard some inane conversations on the cell phone at highly inappropriate times (such as in my exam room), but it is a true necessity as a physician taking call. I couldn't imagine life without the convenience. I honestly don't care about text-messaging (never done it), or using the camera phone feature, or listening to music. I just want to be able to make simple calls. I had several older physicians tell me that they routinely carried change with them so they could use a public telephone to answer pages. So hurray to progress, but let me never forget my cell phone again!