I woke up this morning and thought, "I can't believe I'm on call again tomorrow. Wasn't I just on call the other night?" Yes, I was just on call Saturday night and again tomorrow night. That's the beauty of a q4 call (every fourth night). On my noncall days, I used to stay in the MICU an extra hour to do paperwork--update notes, discharge summaries, or the signout, but now when the resident suggests I go home, I say thanks, grab my bag, and run out the door.
I now recall during intern orientation an excellent talk about sleep deprivation. The presenter said that trying to judge how impaired you are when sleep deprived is as accurate as doing so when you're drunk. During one of my first post call days, I woke up from my nap and tried to cook some dinner for me and my husband. I thought I was fine after my nap, but I ended up burning my arm on the oven door! How bad was my reaction time? I have a very nice, painful, second-degree burn to remind myself that I'm a poor judge of how impaired I am post call. We eat out now on post-call days!
I'm going to sleep earlier and earlier every night trying to remedy the sleep debt, but the truth is I'm just plain tired most of the time. I have 3 more calls in the MICU but I honestly don't think being on the wards next is going to be any easier on my sleep schedule or social life. All I'm thinking about now is seeing the new Harry Potter movie on my post call day. Just one more 30-hour shift until the movie and a day off!
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4 comments:
Oh my *gawd*, Jess! Second degree burn?! Please don't ever do that again. :( My arm is having sympathy pains for your arm now.
I remember falling asleep while charting on a patient... the pen just scrolled down the page as my head dropped. Hang in there and catch whatever winks you can to recover. When you are awake at home, make sure you do fun things to rejuvinate your soul. Every intern is a saint!
caroline - becca thought i was exaggerating about the burn, but she saw my arm last night and can testify that it looks pretty bad ;)
toni - i actually put my head down on a conference table before radiology rounds and grabbed an extra 10 minutes of sleep before anyone else arrived. i promise to grab sleep whenever i can!
Yes! That burn looked pretty nasty and I only saw it about a week after the fact. I am so glad I got a chance to see you this week :) And I really did mean it when I gave you a standing offer to give you a ride home if you were ever too tired to get yourself home after being on call!
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