Conversing with Life

The Call Syndrome

~ This is a new medical entity. A never-been described phenomenon ~

It's easy to tell if someone is going on nightcall. One can tell by looking at the person.

Note the following:

1. The perpetual frown
2. The furrowed eyebrows
3. The unkempt hair, which will only become more untidy after the call
4. The oily skin (only me lah), which is directly proportional to the level of busy-ness
5. The glasses (no one wears contacts for calls)

The following can be summarised as the pre-call facies, or known colloquially as the 'sian one half' look.

Other than the pre-call facies, the HO will experience the following symptoms:

1. Depressed mood
2. Anhedonia
3. Suicidal intentions (this is a sign of severe disease)
4. Irritability (especially with ineptness) and inpatience
5. Muscle fatigue
6. Tachycardia
7. Gastric pains (especially when meals are skipped)
8. Oligouria (secondary to poor intake)

The call syndrome can be categorised into different severities:

It is commonly categorised using the visual analog scale.

The face on the extreme left indicates: mild disease (whereby you get 5hrs of sleep and woken up twice for panadol)

The face on the extreme right indicates: severe disease (whereby the phone does not stop ringing and you have not stopped working - a fair indicator is also when the phone battery falls from 5 bars to 1 bar)

NB: As an experiment: do send in your photos of your call facies to wqleow@gmail.com. I will do a visual analog scoring and predict the busy-ness of your call, for free.

Wei Qiang converses @ 21:14