Home Call

[Flynn]

Ok so while home call is great in theory, when DH gets called four times a night and REFUSES TO LEAVE THE ROOM to deal with the call I don't get ample sleep. Add on top of that I am nursing an infant once a night so things get a bit annoying!

I have taken to sleeping on the couch when DH has home call and I like it MUCH MUCH better.

Anyone else do this or something else to manage home call phone calls at all hours of the night?

[Vishenka69]

Thankfully DH never got called in the middle of the night. But I would probably kick him out to the couch.

Flynn,

I don't have any advice because DH doesn't take call, but if he did his butt would be on the couch! There is no reason why your sleep should be interrupted as well.

[mommax3]

I feel your pain. When I had a nursing baby, it really sucked. Here is what DH does. He gets a page....he gets up and goes to another part of the house to make the phone call. I don't hear the conversation or get caught up in the details, and actually, I have gotten pretty good at sleeping through the pager.

It will be a part of my life forever, so I had to find a way to make peace with it.

Sally

[SuzySunshine]

We haven't encountered this yet, but we've already made the agreement that after two calls he goes to the guest room. I guess that means we should get a bed in that room before he starts taking home call!

[SueC]

I usually sleep right through it--but on particularly bad nights, dh moves to the guest bedroom. I'd be annoyed too if he was keeping me up, especially while nursing.

I go through this as well and we have several ways of dealing with it. He prefers to sleep in our 2nd bedroom during home call. If we haven't seen each other and I don't have to get up early the next day, I sometimes convince him to stay in the room with me. I guess I don't mind the calls if it means I am already somewhat rested, don't have obligations in the morning and I want as much extra time as possible.
However, when and if the stork decides to bless us, he will definately be sleeping in the other room! :banned:
mmmm Flynn? Why isn't he sleeping on the couch?

[migirl]

My DH has been taking home call for a couple of years now, and on those nights he always sleeps on the couch or in the guest bedroom. No sense in both of us losing sleep!

Uh, Flynn ... I don't think YOU should be the one sleeping on the couch.

[Rapunzel]

My husband is also a couch-sleeper when he's taking call at home.

The only thing that I've ever found really disturbing about it is that he gave our home number to a patient once. I didn't like that - no matter how much sympathy he feels for a patient I just really don't want him giving our number out to relative strangers who *might* try to call during the day or (worse) in the middle of the night!

Jennifer

[Phoebe]

If DH has home call it is when he is on back-up. He gets called to go in for it being too busy or going out on a transport to pick up a baby. He falls asleep most nights on the couch anyway so I don't hear his pager. The unfortunate thing is that most of his colleagues call our house in the middle of the night instead of page him despite his repeated requests for the page. It irks me! So if the phone rings it is normally only once during the night. Most of the time DH has in-house call.

I don't know if that is good or bad for us.

Jennifer

We have been more fortunate with DH's home calls, but I am always just glad to have him home rather than not seeing him for two days. He doesn't get to do home calls very often, usually on elective rotations.

The thing that irks me is that on the nights he is not on call, he still gets pages from the nurses throughout the night, which wake us up, and he has to call them and tell them he is not on call. Why he doesn't turn off the pager is beyond me, but I can't figure the darn thing out!

[DCJenn]

My husband has the option of potentially carrying two pagers- the adult neuro pager and the peds neuro pager so I dread those nights! But usually it's just the peds neuro pager. Then unfortunatley, since I'm attuned to the various disorders professionally, I always wake up and want to know what's going on, etc. He got a call at home once and was walking the dog so I did the H & P on the phone, met him at the dog park and he called back from there. It was pretty funny! He said I did a better H & P than the interns! (I should hope so, she says indignently...)

Jenn

[fluffhead]

I did the H & P on the phone, met him at the dog park and he called back from there. It was pretty funny! He said I did a better H & P than the interns!

That's great!!
I used to take the sample questions from the board review books, and I did pretty well, just from having watched every episode of ER several times!! I knew all the symptoms of lupus, when to suspect AAA, and whether nurse Carol Hathaway would eventually move to Seattle.

[Auspicious]

I knew all the symptoms of lupus, when to suspect AAA, and whether nurse Carol Hathaway would eventually move to Seattle.

[Cumberland]

Home call........... what a glorious idea............... Unfortunately we will never learn what it is until he is an attending at least. But both of us sleep like logs- he could get up and do the macarena and I wouldnt even remember in the morning.