Tard... really tard. I went to sleep last night at a more-or-less reasonable hour, but I got called at 02:15 or so. The night tech was pretty busy, and the doc had ordered a cervical spine (neck) CT on a trauma patient, and she'd never done one before. So I roll in there about 15 minutes later and my patient has gone from "serious" condition to actively dying. He had multiple prior medical conditions, some of them quite serious; the odds were really piled up against this guy's survival, and he eventually lost the fight. So I came on home, but I couldn't get back to sleep until about 04:30, and I had the alarm set for 05:30. Hit the snooze control until 06:15. The meeting that I had to go to was really pretty interesting, and I was able to stay awake and pay attention. The rest of the day really dragged, though. I did get in a rather distasteful shouting match over the phone with one of our referring physicians. I had heard that the consensus was that this guy was an asshole, but I hadn't had any dealings with him before today. So I answered the phone... "CT, Doug." I finally got him calmed down enough to be coherent... it seems that he'd ordered the wrong exams on a patient and we'd foolishly done what was ordered. The patient had now received the maximum dose of contrast that he could have in one day, so we couldn't do the exams that he actually wanted done until tomorrow. He was very unhappy about this, and he thought that maybe by sputtering on the phone, if he was loud enough and rude enough, he could over-ride the physiological truths that govern such things.
Didn't work, needless to say. I'm looking forward to meeting this guy in person some day. Anyway, I was busy right up to time to go home and a little bit longer. It's still horribly hot on the drive home at 18:00, but when I get there I notice that the lawn is mowed and trimmed. Yep, Brian got out and did the work, with Karen supervising. Later this evening, Lisa came over and chatted with us for a while... it's always good to see her. She had a thyroidectomy over a year ago, and she's much healthier now, and looks much better, than she ever has before. Karen keeps joking with her about coming back to live with us again, or just maybe coming over every day and doing the housework... I think that karen's joking, but you never can tell. I'm going to go to bed really early tonight, and just hope that I don't get called again...
"Do it!"
"Pardon me?"
"Do it! Just do it!"
"I'm sorry, what are you talking about?"
"My patient! I need the chest scan done NOW! Just do it!"
"Sorry, who are you and who is your patient?"
