Home Call

Taking call from home is miserable.  

When I was an intern, I despised being on call.  A 24-hour weekend shift after a long week was almost torture.  I didn't realize that taking call from home was going to be so much worse. In my mind, the ability to escape the hospital would far outweigh the inconvenience of having to occasionally come back in to see a patient.

I was so, so wrong.

You see, at least with in-house call, I can leave my hospital problems in the hospital and not be bothered by them at home.  I am pretty sure that every page, and especially every ED consult, is 10,000 times more aggravating when it rips you from your home and forces you back to work.

After a long day at work, the only thing I want to do at night is do go to sleep.  When that pager tears me from REM and summons me to the ED, all I can think about during my five minute commute is "I could be in bed right now." It is immensely frustrating.  And when I get paged again on my way home from the hospital and have to turn my car around... I don't think there is a faster way to crush someone's soul. 

When I took call in the hospital, I didn't plan on sleeping.  Things were just too busy.  As I didn't expect to sleep, I was never disappointed to have been awake all night.  For some reason, despite my wealth of experience to the contrary, I always harbor some ridiculous belief that I am going to get decent sleep on my call nights or spend quality time with my family.  Thus, many a call night ends up a horrible disappointment.

I freely admit, pitching a home call "no-hitter" isn't a rare event, by any stretch, but it isn't common either.  It happens just frequently enough for you to get your hopes up that any given night might be a good one.  It generally isn't. 

I had been curious to discover how having a newborn was going to compare to taking home call.  In fact, over the last two years, whenever Cami complained about my excessive fatigue and occasional moodiness, I  reminded her that she may some day know what it's like to be this tired.  Fortunately for Cami, my assessment so far is that baby call is a lot easier than home call.  A baby cry is nowhere near as grating as a pager (interestingly, Cami doesn't hear my pager and I rarely hear Charlie's fussing).  Soothing a whimpering newborn is also a touch more enjoyable than draining a peritonsillar abscess.  And though Cami is on call every night,  Charlie hasn't made it too rough on her.  He's actually been a really good sleeper.

In conclusion, home call is terrible.  I am desperately looking forward to the day when I am no longer the first contact person for the hospital (just six more months).