Look, Ma, no crisis pager!

Oh, wow. I had no idea what a difference that made.

See, the intern, which I am no longer, carries this screaming little black box of death thing called the "crisis pager." Which gets all the outside calls from patients, the referrals from other hospitals, and on the weekends, all the floor calls. The second year only gets the consults from other services and like consult-related issues (well, when I'm on night float, as Peng is right now - hi Peng! No, really, I'm going to bed - I'll have the crisis pager again). And I only had four consults to see today. Well, it started out as five...but then I got to the ICU and was like, okay, where's Ms. H? And this nurse sitting there says, "She's dead." Well, that's kind of what he said.

Allow me to illustrate this exchange:

Me (to med student): Okay, so, we have two people to see. Now, I think Ms. H is over here...
Nurse: Ms. H?
Me: Yes.
Nurse: She's dead.
Me: Dead??
Nurse: Yep. Dead.
Me: Wow.
Nurse: Expired.
Me: Huh.
Nurse: She's deceased.
Me: Mmm.
Nurse: See the big black box? (Gestures to monitor)
Me: Yeah.
Nurse: Dead.
Me: Right.
Nurse: She is no more.
Me: Okay.
Nurse: She's in rigor.
Me: (unintelligible sound)
Nurse: Dead.
Me: If I take her and whack her on the counter, will she still be dead, or just resting?
Nurse (who may or may not have known what I was referring to): Ha! That's great.

Hmmmm.

Reminded me an awful lot of this:


Fortunately, I do love that.

I saw another guy with an amazing story. He went out behind his shed, put his gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger...and the hammer caught on his sleeve. He says to me, "I guess I have a guardian angel out there."

I was floored. And this was, like, a week ago. He came in for something completely different. And he's feeling more hopeful now. But he also describes this feeling of pulling the trigger and the gun not going off, and being like....wait....am I dead? And he kind of opened his eyes and looked around, and could still hear the birds singing...and was like....no...I think I'm still here...and then went to move the gun down and realized what had happened.

I know that feeling. I remember it from when I rolled my car off the highway in NH. That feeling of...am I dead? Is this dead? Could I be dead? Wait...wait...no....okay....not dead. Except for the part where I didn't put the car in my mouth and pull the trigger. Er, you know what I mean. I can't imagine what it must be like to want to be dead, to think you're going to be dead....and then realize you've been given a second chance.

Crazy.