Specialization is for Insects

Monday on the Paediatrics Service (since Mardi just posted an appeal for visiting volunteer docs, here is the 11 pm off-the-top-of-my-head recap of what came across my service today, just to whet the appetite):  rickets, malnutrition, tuberculosis, pneumonia, more pneumonia, gastroenteritis, more gastroenteritis, chicken pox in a burn patient, hypernatremic dehydration and septic shock, renal failure, recurrent pyelonephritis, question of sexual abuse, precocious puberty, increased intracranial pressure with impending herniation, probable cerebellar tumor, colic, seizures, more seizures, heart arrhythmia, meningitis, bacteremia, diaper rash, viral hepatitis.  And an email introduction of an admission tomorrow with TB osteomyelitis.  

So when, at 5:30 pm in the casualty department, I was giving the intern on call instructions about an admission I had just evaluated and how to call me with issues, he looked at me and said "But Dr. Jennifer, you aren't on call" and I could have hugged him.  I was so in the groove of all day and night Sat, Sun, and Monday, it hadn't occurred to me that I was no longer responsible.  I walked home in the deluge of rain (courtesy of my chivalrous 16 year old who showed up with an umbrella, either hoping to extract me for getting dinner or just being a gentleman).  Who knows what tomorrow will hold.