on call

I'm on call right now and it's kind of a slow day. This is one of the nice times to be an intern because I just have to take care of the patients on the floor, while the senior level residents admit patients from the ER. Being a Sunday, the list of patients is dwindling and it's niiiiiice. I got ice cream, checked my email, and hopefully will get some sleep tonight. As long as everyone is tucked in, things will be nice. This year has taught me a few things about sleep.

1. I can function very well on extremely little sleep. When I was a kid and I would go to sleepover parties, I would hate not getting any sleep because I would feel like crap for days after then. It might have been because I was still growing but it was torture when I didn't get a full night's sleep. I'm amazed at how well I can function when I have 1 hour of sleep after being awake from 4:30am that prior morning. The energy just comes from somewhere and I don't know where I've been hiding it.

2. I freakin love to sleep. Though I just mentioned that I need to sleep, I really have to get my sleep because I feel pain when I don't have it. I know this statement sounds a little contradictory to my previous one, but it's true. This year has deprived me of so much sleep that I have grown to appreciate it that much more.

That's all that I think I can talk about now. I think I'll go watch the news. I'm such a dork. That's ok. You love it.

post-call sleepiness

I'm in a semi-conscious state right now. I was just on call at the hospital for general surgery, which could be one of the busiest general surgical residencies in the country, especially for a weekend call. It was myself managing approximately 60 patients, while a third year resident handled patients coming into the emergency room and surgical consults. He also had to go to the operating room to take out someone's appendix. There's a 5th year taking call from home, too. Needless to say, it's a very busy day. Actually, this was quite a tame night compared to previous ones. No one crashed, sundowned, clotted (except one, but she had an IVC filter already). Nurses were nice to me and only woke me up twice and I was actually able to get a couple hours of sleep.

I can't complain too much, considering that I'm almost done. Only 2 more months to go and my life will be much easier than it is right now. I'm going to do research in the Anesthesiology department with no weekends and no call! Plus it's a paid postion. I'm trying to find moonlighting positions out there but there are NO hospitals that have general surgery moonlighting that I qualify for. I don't really understand it, considering the demand for them here. Must not comply with the 80 hour work week, I guess.

I still want to have a blog about the different smells of call. I can write for hours on the different aspects of call. Each one has it's own unique, memorable characteristic. I promise that I will get to it.

remind me to talk about the grape bathroom