Living in Southern California, I don't measure the seasons by weather changes, because there are no weather changes. I also don't determine when spring arrives by the calendar, because I never look at one. I don't even note the arrival of spring by the flowers blooming or by the birds chirping every morning. I know exactly what the season is every day because I see it 40 times a day in patients' charts.

How do I know when spring has arrived? My pager stops going off a million times every night! Our office is one of the very few in Orange County (California) that has the doctor on call for its patients. All winter long I expect to get around 5 pages each evening, and around 20 or so on the weekends. Around February and March, this really starts to wear on me (if I sound a little grouchy when I answer your page, I apologize).

So this past Saturday, I thought my pager must be broken or something. 10 a.m. rolled around, and no one had paged me yet. Around noon I tested my pager to make sure it was working. By 4 p.m., I knew something must be wrong with my pager. I even changed that battery. Around 8 p.m., someone FINALLY paged me. At last, someone needed me. I was overjoyed to help this person. I went to bed around 11p.m., wondering at what time my beeper would go off during the night because whoever wasn't paging me all day long would probably need help at 3 a.m.

I woke up the next morning after a full night's sleep (well, not counting being woken up by the baby), and it hit me - SPRING HAS ARRIVED! Cold and flu season is over, and I can enjoy my evenings once again with my family - at least until next winter.

Dr. Bob