I have this theory about call nights that I like to call The Antz Theory.
Remember that movie Antz? Remember how it came out at exactly the same time as that other movie A Bug’s Life? I remember it because there were like two movies from the point of view of bugs like EVER, and they both came out the same week.
And then there was that movie Armageddon, about the comet hitting earth. And then like a week later Deep Impact came out, also about a comet hitting earth. And then there was never another movie about a comet hitting earth ever again?
Well, call is kind of like that too.
On one call night, you’ll have four admissions, all with massive ascites and peritonitis. Then you’ll never have another patient like that for the rest of the month. Or you’ll get five admits with chest pain on one call and none on your next. Or if there’s some weird cancer you’ve never heard of, you’ll get two patients with that cancer on the same night.
I don’t know why this would be true, but I noticed it persistently through my whole career.
Anyway, what I’m really trying to say here is that Armageddon sucked. I hate Ben Affleck.
Does that fall along the lines of 'every blood glucose check I did tonight was abnormal'?
ReplyDeleteArmageddon did suck. Also, the Aerosmith song assoc. with the movie sucked. And Liv Tyler can't act.
ReplyDeleteI agree with every one of those statements.
DeleteThat would be the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. Though I like Antz Theory better.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/
I loved Deep Impact way more than Armageddon.
ReplyDeleteYou forgot the movies Volcano & Dante's Peak, also in the late 90s... :-)
ReplyDeleteThis would happen to me all the time when I worked at Footlocker. 3-4 customers would come in with the same size within the hour. Crazy...
ReplyDeleteThe Town is good though (ben affleck movie)
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a little overrated.
DeleteAhh, the disaster movie genre. My favorite was the Poopsidedown Adventure, or something like that.
ReplyDeleteI read Steve Jobs' biography recently, and interesting thing about Antz is that those two movies came out at a time that the Disney/Pixar relationship was becoming contentious. There are some (seemingly valid) claims that Disney "stole" the bug-idea from Pixar, and then despite negotiation attempts, released the movie before A Bug's Life was released. Can't remember the whole brouhaha though.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I hear you. That tends to happen to me on my calls as well. Except TB and HIV don't count because it's more of a miracle when a patient comes in withOUT one of those two.
Yeah, I've heard that it's no coincidence.
DeleteI'm still in undergrad, but I work at a doctor's office, and do the nuclear stress reports. I've noticed exactly the same thing! Any time one patient has an ischemic test result, all the rest do as well. If one is non-diagnostic so are the rest. If one guy has PVCs then you can bet your life that everyone else that day will have PVCs.
ReplyDeleteMy math degree wants to make me talk to you about confirmation bias and illusory correlation. But statistics can just shut up, because you're totally right. We've all had that week where Monday is a solid run of dysrhythmias, Tuesday is all traumas, and Wednesday is nothing but psych patients.
ReplyDeleteI was involved with two patients that had primordial dwarfism syndromes last week. Insane.
ReplyDeleteFriends of mine worked at Pixar and worked on Antz. There was a lot of bad blood between Pixar & Disney, and charges of industrial spying. Pretty much what barefootmeds said. Pixar worked on Antz for years, and then Disney got this idea to do a bug movie, too. Apparently (I mean *cough* allegedly) when they found out Pixar had one in the works Disney rushed everything to get their movie out first. By a whole week.
ReplyDeleteReally pathetic. And Antz was a better movie, anyway. :-)
You're missing the point, people! Ben Affleck really DOES suck!
ReplyDeleteWe had three cases of HIT in a two week span a while back... the attending said it was the first time he seen any HIT in his 20+ year career! we were beginning to wonder if we got a faulty batch of heparin or something.
ReplyDelete