There’s just this ONE thing I fear post call.

I call it the…

ACUTE TRANSIENT POST CALL POST TRAUMATIC STRESS REACTION aka POST-CALL SHORT-LIVED DELIRIUM.

It involves a transient fluctuating consciousness, which usually occurs after the dr takes a nap and wakes up when night has fallen. He/she becomes disoriented to time, being unable to tell whether night has fallen OR dawn is coming and he/she has to get to work. Ie. If you woke up at 630pm, you might think it’s 630am and then panic, thinking that you’d woken up late for work!

The weirdest acute stress reaction I had was today… I was dreaming abt my patient who needed a femoral perm cath… and blah blah (patient confidentiality) and then I woke up panicking, under the impression that emergent HD was required but no vascular access and aiyo I was so ganjiong I dunno why I went to call my surgery HO friend, and the best part was, I called the wrong hospital’s surgical HO. Thankfully, that person was post-call too, so apart from getting his beauty rest interrupted by weird questions abt vascular surgery and HD, and an unecessarily garbled person’s insane ramblings… and attempt to cover up the blotch (cuz I realised called the wrong person and then also wondering why the hell I callling them anyway), nothing really bad happened. Haha… This is so embarrassing. Heng I don’t have the vascular pple’s contact no. of tomorrow I’ll be infamous in that dpt!