Dumbest Midnight Calls

Emergencies can arise at any time; this is exactly why there are doctors on call through the night. However, many inconsequential, obvious, and downright bizarre telephone calls can come in the small hours. In a recent discussion on Medscape's Physician Connect (MPC), an all-physician discussion group, doctors discussed some of the weirdest and most memorable of these consultations.

Pediatricians bear the heaviest burden when it comes to fielding what some of them have termed "sleep-wakers." Parental concern, of course, is laudable: A parent with an obvious question during daytime hours might be considered thorough, but a father calling at 3 AM asking whether his 5-month-old son's breasts are too large is something else entirely. The pediatrician who handled that worried father commented, "I had to put the phone on mute while I collected myself. I've never laughed so hard at 3 AM. It took me forever to convince this 'manly man' father that gynecomastia is normal in male newborns."

Another pediatrician, who was less inclined to embrace the comedy, was once awakened by a mother who asked, "My 4-month-old baby takes 4 oz every 4 hours. He still seems hungry. What should I do?" The groggy physician barely managed to keep from saying, "Kill the child and then yourself. The world will be better without your genes."

New parents can also develop an odd competitiveness, like one mother who placed an emergency call to her pediatrician to ask, "I just found out my neighbor's 8-month-old girl eats more than my 8-month-old son. What should I do?"

"I forgot what I said," wrote the physician who took the call.

However, other physicians did not forget what they said in response to odd phone calls; many fondly recalled cherished one-liners. An obstetrician/gynecologist recounted a late-night question from a patient's husband: "Once a guy called me to ask if he should have sex with his wife. They were trying to get pregnant. My answer was, 'What do you have to lose?'"

A pediatrician related how a mother queried, "'Every time I feed my baby, he poops. Is that normal?' I felt like answering: 'Let me Google that for you.'"

A colleague, interrupted from a favorite television program, related how a mother asked, "'My baby just fell off the couch. What should I do?' After the usual assessments of consciousness and neurologic function, with some difficulty, I asked if the baby was bleeding from his nose or mouth. The mother giggled and said, 'I dunno.' I said, 'Ma'am, you're a good deal closer to him than I am. How about if you go take a look?'"

Sometimes even the most seemingly normal of situations prompts a call from a worried parent: "I recently had the 2 AM call from a mother of a 4-month-old who said, 'My baby is asleep. She's been asleep for 5 hours. Shouldn't she be awake by now?'" wrote a pediatrician.

It is not only parents of infants who need this kind of guidance. The mother of an 18-year-old phoned her pediatrician to say, "He's got a cold; he can't sleep; and he has to be up in the morning for work!"

Even grandparents, who presumably have been through it all, can get in on the act, as one pediatrician reported: "Agrandmother of a toddler who I'd diagnosed with an uncomplicated upper respiratory tract infection the day before worried because there was a rattling sound coming from the baby's nose when she breathed. Not from the chest, [the grandmother] was quick to point out, just the nose. She was very worried. I wanted to say: 'Lady, you're a grandmother. Ain'tcha never seen a cold before?'"

It is not only the maladies of children that prompt these calls. General practitioners are up at night tending to adult concerns: "A woman is scheduled for an intravenous pyelogram as OP at 9 AM. Her instructions were to have nothing but one piece of bread after midnight. The woman wants to know if it's OK to have a bagel instead?!!" wrote one general practitioner.

A colleague shared an experience of a patient asking for medical and logistical advice: "A woman had been cheating on her husband, with his brother. She thinks her husband may be sterile, so she called us, the family planning department, to ask the following questions: How likely is it that her husband is sterile? If he is, when is the best weekend to have her brother-in-law visit so she can have sex with him and maximize her chances of conception?"

Although many contributed stories of these sleep-wakers, few offered solutions. A rare exception was a pediatrician who suggested putting parents on hold and playing them the theme from the film Friday the 13th.

Perhaps the final word should be from a retired pediatrician who wrote: "I'm enjoying retirement and no call nights!!"

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