(I thought this was funny. As seen on Facebook, written by one of my past attending physicians (identities blurred out))

the call pager may appear like a simple box of plastic powered by a AAA battery but, in fact, it is akin to the one ring from the LoR trilogy or a deathly hallow from the HP series. when growing up as a med student, one dreams of the ultimate power of becoming a physician: to enter orders, to heal patients, and to return pages from this box plastic by answering “this is dr. _____ returning a page”. alas, with great power comes great responsibility… Wednesday at 8:26pm

soon this box of plastic powered by a AAA battery can see through you searing the depths of your soul (hence, the one ring analogy) and you get paged at the most inopportune times: in the bathroom, while sleeping, trying to hit on your senior resident while rotating on peds wards (if you’re single and available). at some point in residency training, every trainee has thought to themself: “man, i wonder what life would be like without having this box of plastic tethered to my hip” or “let’s blow this mother up”… Wednesday at 8:30pm

so what was once something that you wanted, you soon come to dread. eventually though, usually in later years of training, the pager is much less painful and eventually, as dr. _____ suggests above, you become a frog and you forget what it’s like to be a tadpole. it becomes an unfortunate but necessary consequence of becoming a physician because truthfully, without it, we wouldn’t know when patients (or nurses who care most directly for patients) need us. hope that little ditty explains to you how a simple communication technology has taken on a life and mythology of its own. cheers ____ Wednesday at 8:33pm