Apparently at around 8 or so this morning, a sewer beneath Oakland flooded. This in turn caused water to spill into the areas containing a main power line which supplies power to most of Oakland. The power line shorted out, taking out power to a large chunk of the neighborhood, including Presby. Presby, being a hospital, immediately whipped out the backup generators.

They failed.

And so Presby's power died. Along with it, the hospital took out the server farms for every single electronic function in my hospital.

Thus when I came in to work this morning, it was to chaos and despair. No patient tracking systems. No patient registration. No physician order entry. No order entry period. No lab values reporting. No imaging system functionality. No e-mail. No internet.

Now, in a situation like this, who takes it in the shorts? (Hint. The doctors and nurses LOVED it. They like working on paper, the technophobes.)

Today was a nightmare of trying to keep the place functioning, being overworked, writing out every single order, calling hither and thither to try to get anything done, dealing with angry patients... In short, somewhere between triple and quadruple my ordinary workload. For twelve hours straight with only half an hour break.

Worst. Day. Ever.