The thing about calls - and I know I talk about it a lot but damn I hate calls - is that can you imagine, when at 3AM you finally get some rest and your head on something soft (or the table), and you fall into this nightmare feauturing jaundiced people, and you get woken up by some nurse calling the wrong HO, or someone wanting a sleeping pill because, surprise, they don't get any sleep in the hospital because their bed neighbour is demented and shouting the ward down. Or worse, someone is having a heart attack...great.

At the 2PM mark post-call, I start hating everything before me. It doesn't matter what. And you can keep going, keep on going for a very long time (10, 11PM..) but at the 2PM mark a feeling of rising desperation starts to build. A little like standing in front of a firing squad. One-fifteenth of that heart constricting dread. And it keeps building and you keep feeling - hateful, desperate, and you just...want to cry.

So. Yes. I hate calls. I hate... calls.

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On another note, there is a scope of tragedy in the hospital - of lives cut short and dreams unfulfilled, of empty eyes and silent tears, bit-back cries and wavering smiles... And then there are the unstable, the crashing, and it's as if everything in this place is teetering on the edge.

And it sounds really cheesy when people say, we have to be grateful for what we have. But really, we should. We have family who would come to us if we were sick. We don't have cancer. We can walk, run, climb, make our own way. We can wipe our own ass.

There are two things which hurt to see. One is young people who have a new, unexpected diagnosis. The other is the elderly who have deteriorated, and then we get to see the extent to which a human can lose things...we see someone lose so much, I never knew we had all that to begin with. The loss of dignity, above all, is painful to watch. Is it any surprise most doctors would choose unequivocably to die at peace at home, than fight to the end in the hospital?