Doctor Curmudgeon® Just Leave Me Alone!

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By Diane Batshaw-Eisman MD FAAFP

People should know better than to beep, landline, or mobile phone a physician at 7:45AM on a Saturday morning (unless it’s an emergency….which should go without saying)

Said physician might very well have been up late, feeling secure in late night television viewing, reading and/or texting friends and family. This physician might have enjoyed the luxury of “sleeping in.”

Therefore, do not send idle messages her way.

The beeper shrilled.

Doctor Curmudgeon® pulled her quilt over her head.

It beeped again.

Rousing her weary self from a really lovely dream in which she was about to be seated at an invitation only dark chocolate tasting, she realized that intrusively summoning her at such an early hour on a weekend had to be something important.

It must be a patient who was in pain.

Or a patient with a problem and needed to speak with her.

These things she understood.

She wanted to be available for emergencies and urgencies and even concerns that crept up on her patients in the dark of the night

She was a physician 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Both the Hippocratic Oath and the Oath of Maimonides had been sworn to by her.

She was humbled and happy in the knowledge that her patients knew that they could count on her.
As a curmudgeonlet, she felt secure in knowing that her own physicians, Dr. Fred Stenn, Dr. Mathew Creighton and her orthopedists, Drs. Callahan and Danny Levinthal were always there for her. But she also knew that her parents would not call them unless they had concerns about her health

This was simply common (and as she was about to find out: UN-common sense)
Reaching for the nightstand, she toppled over a stack of books, bedside lamp and IPhone.

Now, fully awake, she came to the realization that this was not to be a one-handed, laying down, head cradled in pillow task.

She had to sit up and reach for the beeper which kept beeping, insisting on its importance.

And what did that digital screen say?

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Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”

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