I've gotten many emails in the past couple of weeks from friends and family inquiring as to why I haven't written.

Here's your answer.

One of the biggest problems with wearing four pagers is not falling asleep, but it's going to the bathroom. As soon as you loosen the drawstring on your scrub buttoms, the weight of the pagers whip your pants right off. I guess I'm just not used to having my pants ripped off.

The second problem is trying to figure out which one of them is actually going off. This is more difficult when it's 3 AM in the morning. Confusing matters further, sometimes just to piss you off, the pagers will conspire against you and two or more will go off at the same time.

I don't wear four pagers all the time, but only when I'm on call. I remember the first time I donned my pager as a real, diploma-backed physician as an invigorating experience. It's as if knowledge, comfort, empathy, and the power to heal streamed from my pager, marking my transition from a worthless medical student to an invincible surgeon. The first time my pager went off, for the first time since I started medical school, I actually felt important.

But it's not really like that. First-year residents (otherwise known as interns) are the Atlases of the hospital. We support services of 50+ patients on our shoulders. We are shit upon by the shit upon. We are pissed on by the pissed off.

And our pagers are not our friends. The surfers among you who are married or incarcerated may know what I mean by a "ball and chain." But instead of just one spouse or one ball and chain, we are at the mercy of what seems like the millions of nurses that are employed by the hospital. And I've got to hand it to nurses. They have a special sixth sense as they seem to know the second we become unbusy. If I even think about getting something to eat, my pager will go off. If I just happen to daydream about maybe finally taking a nap, my pager will go off. If I feel the urge to use the restroom, my pager invariably has different plans for me.

It only took a couple of days to realize that my pager is not my friend. It does not give me empathy or knowledge and it certainly doesn't make me important. My pager is evil. Though my beeping pager used to instill within me feelings of significance, these days the only feelings I experience are very similar to those of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). As soon as my pager goes off, a stinging discharge from my sympathetic nervous system causes me to become tachycardic, diaphoretic, and anxious.

As I began my current rotation, you can imagine my horror of having to strap on four of these little buddies.

In the above photograph, you have, from left to right, my friendly and sophisticated OHSU pager, the shy yet crass Trauma Surgery cross-cover pager, the boisterous but polite General Surgery cross-cover pager, and finally, the annoying, halitotic, big bad boy of them all, the Trauma Team Activation pager. And no, these aren't my friends' pagers. I have the distinct honor of wearing them all and trying to keep my pants on when I'm on call.

I long for the day when I can rid myself of this Devil-in-the-Box.

But wait, "This is a photojournal!" the surfers exclaim.

Very well.

These are old pictures from over about two weeks ago.

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