I had a couple of meetings in Boston the other day. Shut off my cell phone. Liberated.  Never turned it back on until I got home, much to the chagrin of those who tried to contact me.  “We tried to reach you!” they chimed.  

      The world didn’t end. The house didn’t blow up. Nobody died. 

      First and foremost, I don’t do well with interruptions. When I had to wear a pager at the hospital, it was the equivalent of someone sneaking up behind me and banging a gong.  It always seemed as though some dispatcher was following me on camera throughout the hospital and would set the pager off at the completely worst time. Inevitably, the disruption would occur during a patient or family's most intimate, challenging moments. A nasal BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP would leap from my pocket and land smack dab into the middle of a deeply sensitive topic. "Please, excuse me," I would offer. To break the awkwardness upon return, I would hold up the pager and say something like, “Do you see this pager? Some day you are going to be walking by this hospital and see it flying right out of one of these windows."

      I know I am not the only one who felt jolted by the sound of a pager. I came across a statement from a doctor while conducting research for our documentary.  "When my pager goes off," he admitted, "I feel like I am going to have a heart attack." Turns out, it was my doctor.

      I try to imagine what it must be like for physicians. How does one deal with the continual balance of standing on a wire where death waits on one side and life on the other?

      Talk about heart attacks.