I started this day off *way* too early... 04:00, to be exact. No, that was not exact, it was 03:44, *that* is exact. And I'd stayed up past midnight for some stupid reason. It was a busy night in the ED, and when I got there I had three CTs to do, and the xray tech was working about seven patients behind. The first patient that I tried to do decided that he would walk out, forget this CT stuff. He probably had a renal stone, and the pain went away after he got his meds. Of course, that's what the pain is supposed to do, go away, when you use narcotics on it. Sometimes there will be a stone in the ureter (the tube between the kidney and the bladder) and it will pass, coincidental to the medication. Sometimes, though, it will just be stuck, in which case it will also quit hurting, and the meds will mask the pain until the next time that it starts moving. Fairly frequently, in fact, this is the case. Of course, we'll never know what happened to this character, 'cause if his pain started up again, he probably would've gone to the other hospital out of embarrassment, 'cause he left AMA. I hate to wish anyone ill, but sometimes... sometimes medicine provides some justice. In this case, we can imagine that justice has been done. O'wait, come to think of it, that's almost always how justice is... imaginination. One of the other patients was an old fellow who fell down, and the third patient was a young girl who was involved in an MVA. Prom night, heh. Pickup truck. Rural county road. Out in the boonies, heh. Anyways, I got home about 07:00. Showered, went to bed, right back to sleep. 07:53, the phone rang. I got up, went in and did two patients. Clocked out, went to the cafeteria and ate some breakfast. I went back downstairs and there were two more studies to be done, so I clocked back in again... did those, clocked out and went home. Spent an hour at home. Got called in. Came home for ten minutes. Called back in. Did one case. clocked out, but didn't make it out of the hospital before I was paged. I got home at 13:30. Lay down on the couch. The phone didn't ring, and I almost went to sleep. Got up and laid down on the bed. The phone still didn't ring. Took off my clothes, put on the CPAP. Slept until 18:11! I was pretty amazed when Karen woke me up and I saw what time it was. I went in, did three patients and talked with the night tech, who just came on duty. I was, of course, glad to see her... she will do all of the CTs tonight, unless there is a major disaster. Weather-wise, this has been a beautiful weekend, highs in the upper 70s. Tonight there are some major thunderstorms to out north and west, and a little cell nearby is producing a lot of lightning and a few drops of rain so far. Most of the major stuff is going north of here, dammit. JD will be coming down next weekend, Karen and I are looking forward to seeing him. He and Annette are in Huntsville this weekend to see his mother graduate. Maybe he and I will try to do some fishing...