My Weekend

It was another weekend on call. Filled with the usual phone calls, hospital work, and Saturday clinic. I dread weekend's on call. Mostly because they take me away from my family. There is also, ofcourse, the lack of sleep. Getting up at 5am on Saturday is no fun. But this is what I do. Every third week. It is what it is.

My call, at least, this time was brightened by the morning clinic. I was a little bit less busy then usual so had more time to talk with my patients. A rare luxury, I like to take advantage of extra time when I get it. My first two patients were a man and a wife in their eighties who live in a local nursing home. After going into the regular littany of medical questions I started my exam. While taking blood pressure, stethoscoping, pushing and pulling.... curiosity got the best of me. I started in with the personal questions.

"So how long have youy been married?....How many kids to do you have? Grandkids? Great Grandkids? where did you both grow up?". I am always amazed at how much I learn from people by asking these type of questions. And as usual this couple surprised me.

I would have never guessed it from looking at them...but they had been only married for fifteen years! Apparently they had met in their teens and at the tender age of twenty she had refused his marriage proposal. Years passsed. They both married other people and had kids, they both got divorced. And forty years later after minimal contact he picked up the phone and called her and they realized that they lived blocks away. The rest was history.

A little later in the day I saw another patient who was relatively new to me. I had seen her only a few times for minor problems. Each time she came in accompanied by her daughter. And each time I kept thinking that I somehow had met her daughter before. But I just couldn't place her. As my patient was preparing to leave her daughter mentioned that, "oh by the way mom will be on TV next week!" And that's when it dawned on me. Her daughter looked familiar becuase I had seen her before...many times in fact, she is on a TV show I occasionally watch. How funny! I didn't even recognize her.

I guess it just goes to show that even a monotonous, boring, weekend on call can turn out to have some surprises.