The date was June 27th, 2020. Dustin was at the end of his 2nd year of orthopedic surgery residency training at a hospital in beautiful Southern California. His city was known for its elite status as a “Blue Zone,” a testament to the overall health of its occupants.

Second year of orthopedic training is notoriously abysmal, not just at his institution, but nationwide. There was one more day of clinic and one more day in the operating room between Dustin and the finish line. He would have dragged his almost lifeless body across that finish line on June 30th, were it not for one unfortunate encounter.

Earlier that week, his wife could be seen dancing through the streets, smiling at friends and neighbors for the first time since last July.

One of her friends reported her gleefully saying, “We’re going to have a bonfire to celebrate,” with a look of pure joy in her eyes. Today, that joy is gone thanks to a pitifully small bee, spider, mosquito, or other unknown mutant species.

The infection started from a small red patch on his right cheek that just showed up on the morning of the 27th from a bite that presumably happened during the night. The fact that Dustin never felt a bite left medical examiners baffled as they performed his autopsy.

“It looks nothing like any bite I’ve seen in my textbooks,” said Dr. Fayle, the ENT intern who saw Dustin’s body on July 1st, the first day of his residency. “What we do know, is that the bite led to infection that attempted to drain through a lymph node.”

When asked if anything could have been done differently to save the poor resident, Dr. Fayle shrugged and said, “reduced exposure to air outside the hospital could have limited contact with the attacking species.”

After 6 years of post graduate training, it is devastating that this small nugget of information slipped through the cracks.

“We try to keep our residents as busy as possible to avoid such tragedies,” says the orthopedic residency program director. “We know that optimum opportunities for health come from maximized time spent indoors.”

It can’t be overlooked that if Dustin had stuck to his usual pattern of three or less hours of sleep at night, he would have dramatically decreased his odds of being bitten at all.

“Who would have thought it was his weekend off that killed him,” a fellow resident said. “I think I’ll pick up a call shift this weekend, just to be safe.”