Surviving to day 2

Well, I'm still alive. I didn't die of fear, which was just one of my many fears. The first day, night, and call couldn't come anywhere near the nightmares I had the night prior.

When I arrived at the MICU the first morning, the intern signing out to me said, "You're on call tonight? Good luck with that! I was scared coming onto this rotation as the last one of my intern year, so I can't imagine how you feel. Since you're the one on call today, you get to read all the chest x-rays during radiology rounds this morning. Oh, here's the code pager." At that point, I wasn't sure if I wanted to cry or vomit. I was wondering if I could do both when my co-interns showed up. There was work to be done, and if we focused on that, I found myself slightly calmer.

Anyway, I won't bore with all the details, but I can say that most of what people told me beforehand was true. The nurses and residents did take care of us, and we were well supervised. They made sure we ate. We didn't receive any pages until later in the day when we were more oriented, and the pages I received overnight were fairly simple. My resident and attending assured me they knew it was my first night and were available for questions. The nurses were fantastic and guided me towards what was best for the patient.

It would have been nice if someone told me that the code pager goes off every 12 hours just to test them, but there were no real codes. I heard there was a code in our other training hospital overnight, and the patient died. I wonder how the intern over there is doing.

I managed to get 2 to 3 hours of sleep here and there. While I probably could have had more, I didn't feel comfortable sleeping until I knew there was nothing else for me to do and was completely exhausted. I signed out after rounds late this morning. We have intern conference on Tuesdays, and while I know no one would have blamed me for going home, I went to conference. Intern conference is a support group for my class, and I wanted some intern support. It was nice to see everyone and hear how the first day went for everyone. While I have very supportive friends and family, no one knows what this week is like except for my intern classmates. We'll all get through this year together.