This isn't a funny post... if you came here for laughs today, I suggest you check back tomorrow...
My day job involves working with trials of medicines before Joe Public is allowed to get his undeserving hands on them. As chief purveyor of bad taste, I often joke (when confronted by people who might instinctively think: "Medical Research = Torturing fluffy, media-friendly bunnies" before voting Dubya in for another term) that I kill humans, not animals.
The joke came home to roost last month (which is one of the reasons why I've been so busy.) A programmer introduced an error that could have killed someone. While recovering from that, the next week I got a call from a panicked helpdesk member that a doctor was trying to get medication for a chap currently in surgery, and couldn't access the system.
Neither incident turned out to be as bad as they first appeared. No-one got hurt.
But now I have nightmares.
Since I'm on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week I sleep with my mobile phone by my bed. Now, at least once a night I have the following dream.
I'm sleeping, and the phone goes off. Blearily I reach out, pick it up and answer it. All I hear on the other end of the line is people screaming. Screaming and screaming. And it goes on and on until I wake up with a start with that awful sick sensation that comes with not being sure if it all was a dream or not.
Career change, anyone?
