For the most part, I'm not a believer in curses, superstitions, or lucky socks. But there is one jinx I don't mess with, and that's the "call curse." Some residents call it a "black cloud," and the rest don't call it anything for fear of it being true.
If you're a resident, I probably don't need to say more. For the rest of you, I'll give you an example:
I was on call last Friday night. When I woke up to Jordy at 4:30AM instead of the beeping of my pager, I realized I hadn't been paged for nearly six hours. Essentially, I had a full night of sleep. I don't know that that has ever happened during a call in my residency. It was turning out to be a great night, but, of course, I didn't say that out loud. I tried to not even think it - that's the curse, you see.
A little while later Jason woke up. Despite living through my residency, he didn't understand the curse. "I didn't hear your pager last night," he reported. I shot him the angry death glare knowing that he had just unleashed the curse from the call gods. Angrily, I explained my frustration, and then three, maybe four, seconds, literally seconds, later: beep-beep-beep-beep.
The blood rushed out of his face and his mouth gaped open with an endless apology - as he should for doing such an evil thing and ruining my perfectly good call night.
Per my routine, I headed in to the hospital to round. I was finishing up seeing my last patient at 7:50AM, with 10 minutes left on my call shift, when I ran into one of the staff doctors. "Susan, the list doesn't look too bad. It must have been a quiet night." No! Don't say it! You guessed it, despite knocking on wood (or maybe it was just a particle board desk), at 7:53AM my pager rang out: beep-beep-beep-beep. Another admission.
I'm not joking. It's real. Respect it. And don't ever ask me if it's been a quiet night until it's well past 8:01AM!
(And, yes, I know that by writing this I'm guaranteeing that my last three calls of residency are going to be nightmares.)
Haha! Love this because it is very real! :)
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