beep beep beep.
Anyone married to a spouse with a pager just shuddered.
I remember when my husband first received his pager in Medical school. I thought it was kind of cool when it first went off. It made the idea that he was one day going to be a real doctor more of a reality. If he didn't feel important wearing it, at least I felt important for him.
The novelty has long since worn off.
And while hate is a very strong word, and my mom told me never to use it, I'm pretty sure I hate my husband's pager.
This obnoxious, electronic, little piece of plastic that has so much control over our lives.
What I dislike the most is the unpredictability. I don't want to not include my hubby in my plans for the day/evening. But at the same time, I don't want to make plans, only to be disappointed when the darn thing goes off and he has to head to the hospital.
Inevitably I end up planning nothing for the days he's on call, yet secretly hoping that maybe we could do such and such if he doesn't get paged. And then when he does get called in, I'm disappointed that my secret plans were ruined.
It's Murphy's law: If we do make tentative plans, he will get paged and have to head to the hospital. If we don't make any plans, or if I make plans to do something without him, chances are he'll have a quiet day at home.
And did I mention that the Doctor's pager seems to be about 5 decibels louder than any one else's pager? Seriously. As if it wasn't ornery enough in its simple existence, it feels the need to announce its importance to our entire neighborhood with every high pitched bleep.
I knew when my hubby started out in medicine that a pager would be a part of lives. I just think that I had glamourized it in my head. You know, getting paged and having to race off to the hospital to save someone's life. But the pager goes off for many many different reasons when you're on call for the entire province. And none of these reasons seem to phase my hubby. Like a lot of things in this adventure known as residency, I didn't really know what we were in for. And like always, the Doctor is amazingly more accepting and tolerant of the annoyances in our life.
I'm struggling to come to terms with the existence of the pager in our lives, knowing that this small square monstrosity is stuck with us for a while. But it's difficult. Perhaps as the Doctor's call load lightens a little bit, and the high pitched bleeping becomes less frequent, I'll be better able to cope.
Or maybe once these crazy pregnancy hormones disappear I'll just be better able to cope. period.
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