Walking in my sleep

This was my first official weekend on-call. I tried not to get too worked up about it, as there usually isn't anything major that occurs over the weekend. The one exception is if there is an ERNIE, which is essentially a kid who fits 5150 criteria but isn't medically cleared. For example: a kid who is admitted for overdosing on tylenol in a suicide attempt. Clearly, the child needs to be hospitalized in a psychiatric facility, but no psych facility will take them until they are medically stablized and out of danger.

All of this being said, I wasn't anticipating hearing my pager go off. M and I were having a nice Friday evening falling asleep while listening to music. Suddenly there was an electric chirping sound. I was totally disoriented, thinking at first that it was the stereo, and then that it must be the alarm clock. Until M said "your pager" I had no recollection that that was even an option.

It was only 11:15pm, not super late, but it was my first time waking up from a dead sleep and having to jerk into crisis management mode. Luckily this page didn't involve going into the hospital, just talking to fools on the phone who would then go on to ignore my reasoned and educated recommendations. But no matter.

My only other page of the weekend - so far - occured, predictably, as I was getting out of the shower. There is the sense that you should say something about this, like "Oh, I was just getting out of the shower when I got your page", until you hear the anxious and near-panicky pace of the other person when they hear you are psych on-call and realize they could care less about your pleasant weekend activities and instead want you to solve their problem, stat.

Sigh... October can't come soon enough for me...