Top On-Call Pranks

The other day, my friend (and co-Renal fellow) Albert and I played a prank on another Renal fellow, Hakan, by paging him with the message that there was a 103-year-old patient in the Emergency Room named Johnny Scrotum who required urgent dialysis. Where does this rank in my personal all-time list of Top On-Call-Associated Pranks?

#5: Johnny Scrotum.

#4: paging co-fellows to the 1-800-Viagra erectile dysfunction hotline (I have to admit that I borrowed this one from one of my prior senior residents, John Chang, who brilliantly carried out this very same prank on the first day of our internship at Penn).

#3: hiding a fake skeleton under the call room bed and then anonymously paging my co-resident to look under said call room bed in the middle of the night. Freaky.

#2: in an epic battle of "Your Momma" jokes with my friend Aravind, I once wrote an entire official "History and Physical" admission note with Aravind's Momma as the fictitious patient. I think her reason for hospital admission was "excessive flatulence" if I recall correctly.

#1: when I hid a remote-control fart machine under my co-resident Dave's bunk bed (with whom he was sharing with a medical student) and then made it seem as if he was letting loose some bombs all night long. Priceless.

Hey. When you're stuck in the hospital approaching 80 hours a week, you might as well have some fun while you're there, right?