Twelve Days of Christmas (Call)

​Every year, I'm either on call for Christmas or Thanksgiving. This year, it's Christmas. My colleagues have bailed out of town, and I don't blame them. But for a sold 11 days, yours truly is it if you're sick or pregnant or have an impacted piece of steak in your esophagus. And here's what happens….

On the twelfth day of Christmas my call group gave to me….

12) Twelve refill requests (at 3pm on Christmas Eve, appreciate y'all planning ahead, there, folks)

11) Eleven blue haired ladies (but they're super cute and smell like White Shoulders and like to give hugs)

10) Ten lice-a-leaping

9) Nine (million) sperm-a-swimming (hey, bro, congrats!)

8) Eight teens-a-smoking

7) Seven social nightmares (nursing home placement on Christmas Eve or a Pop Drop, anyone?)*

6) Six Percocet honeys**

5) Five requests for the "fat pill" (ba DUM dum dum) ***

4) Four spewing kids

3) Three STD's

2) Two "emergency" scopes****

1) And a drug seeker in a nut tree….


Every single item contains true material, I am sad to say.

*Pop Drop = When you realize that granddad/grandma is either #1) driving you nuts with their mild dementia #2) driving you nuts with their persistent incontinence or #3) impeding your ability to hang with friends and get drunk/high. Therefore, a >very concerned< family member will >rush< pappy to the ER for some nebulous reason like "weakness" (he hasn't properly walked for 5 years, mind you, and this issue could have been properly addressed any of the prior 364 days of the year) and then the family member steps out for a "smoke" at, oh, say, 5pm, to let the ER docs run tests. And the family member doesn't come back until the next day. Or the day afterwards. I've sat with many a mildly confused old person on a Christmas/New Year's Eve while they had a cup of hospital juice and a sandwich, sitting in a hospital bed, all alone, while they keep asking me, "Where's Billy/Jane?" It's pitiful and cruel. Never do this to your loved one.

**Percocet honey harkens back to my training in the hollers of Appalachia where patients made the monthly trip to the doctor's office for their Percocet, or "little white nerve pills" or "oxycontinent" or "low-tabs". These same patients, who were very appreciative of their schedule II meds, would often gift a home-cooked something extra special for doctor and staff. Dubious brownies laced with…? Cookies where you get hungrier the more you eat…? Red velvet cake with a cigarette ash undertone…. And yes, the non-pasteurized botulism honey laced with who-knows-what, normally presented by a sweet doddering octogenarian when they pick up their December Percocet prescription. Thus "Percocet honey".

***Ok, I'm not petite. I admit it. But I have enough personal insight to recognize that no pill will fix the rolls-o-tubble if I don't put in the effort and exercise regularly and eat stuff that isn't coated in fried lard or stuff that still twitches. Folks, you can out-eat ANY pill I give you. Any. Pill. I promise.

****Let's say you have insurance. Let's just say. And let's say every single year, you have a deductible and it resets every January 1st. Every. Single. January. It's not like some years it skips or chooses a different month or you hit the insurance lottery and bingo, no deductible. So folks should know this reset is coming, since it's the same way every single year, right? WRONG. I swear to all that is holy, I always get an irate patient or two every single December 23rd-December 31st who gets turbo-pissed when they realize that I cannot both consult them and get their colonoscopy scheduled before January 1st. (I normally am already booked solid with all the teachers and folks on vacation who FLIPPIN' PLAN AHEAD.) Don't misunderstand. I'm want to make everyone happy. But I cannot pull non-emergent operating room time out of my…. You get the idea. All the docs are cramming surgeries in during the 2 weeks prior to Jan 1st. For the exact same reasons.