Good Bye to On Call Week

Ahhhh, sweet Monday. She comes again but none too soon. The past week was rugged. My sign out to the good man taking over for me today started with two admonishments:  OMG and LHM. What's LHM you ask? He didn't know either. "Lord have Mercy"; a good southern expression.

This is December 19; eeeeech! I've got so much to do and would much rather write blog posts, watch TV and read.The tree is up but bare. The house is a mess.

My on-call week, the last for the year 2011, logs into the memory bank; soon forgotten as part of the steady stream of sameness with a sprinkle of the unknown and  the unique.

This was the week of opposing forces in medicine. By that, I refer to Kidneys vs Heart or Kidneys vs Liver; wicked battles where the requirements for optimal function of one organ stand in direct odds to the requirements of the other. These so called cardio-renal syndromes or hepato-renal syndromes invoke a cringe and dread because good treatments and outcomes are hard to achieve. The best we can hope for, in my opinion, is self-healing. I've never convinced myself that anything I do except "stand by" results in anything other than muddied waters. Sigh.  The week was unusually laden with examples of organs at civil war.

Louisa Lung, Harold Heart, Katie Kidney and Larry Liver

"Why can't we all just get along?", I wonder.  Something like this, maybe....??