What Residency Looks Like XLVI: beep BEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

Sometimes residency looks like being on call 24/14--as in, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 2 weeks.

Sometimes residency looks like trying not to go stir-crazy by leaving the house at least once every day while also having to be ready to report to the hospital within 1 hour.

Sometimes residency looks like getting dressed every morning as if you were going to work--and stashing a pair of scrubs in the car, just in case.

Sometimes residency looks like the strange utilitarian calculus of trying to accomplish as many tasks as possible that would not be catastrophic if they were interrupted by a sudden call to come in to work a shift.

Sometimes residency looks like going to bed on time every night, because you know that the interns sign out at 6am, so you might be getting paged at 5am.

Sometimes residency looks like wrapping your pager in your towel on the side of the pool in case it goes off in the middle of swimming laps.

Sometimes residency looks like checking that your pager sound is on and the battery not dead because it hasn't gone off all weekend (no morning report or noon conference pages on Saturday or Sunday!).

Sometimes residency looks like letting your cat "hold" your pager, because you are so tired of having it on your person.

Sometimes residency looks like having the best first jeopardy that any of the chief residents can remember--because the one time another resident called off, you had clinic, so they asked the resident on second jeopardy to come in instead.


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