The Wards – Day 15

Post call. I left the hospital at 3:45 pm today after working since 7 am yesterday. Call was steady. Not too heinous (and nothing like last weekend’s call), but steady. There was a lull after 2 am and I got 2 hours of sleep from 3:30 to 5:30 this morning! Then the regular buzz of Monday morning activity arrived and we put our heads down and did some work. (There was some coffee required). Its funny, but you definitely hit the wall sometime around 3-5 am of the night you are on call. But then morning arrives, and your body gets a surge of cortisol (a self-made steroid) with sunrise, and you wake up a little no matter how tired you are. This makes the post call mornings a little easier to deal with than the on call middle-of-the nights sometimes. The post call afternoons, however, are when you become completely useless. (One’s circadian rhythms switch into a physiologic equivalent of “Siesta” mode – which is why there is actual medical data that says its smarter to do things the European way, i.e. start a work day a little later, take a break after lunch, and go strong a little later into the early evening – I’m not kidding)

So I went into call with about 7 patients, and I left the hospital today with about 13 patients. I admitted about 8 or 9 patients yesterday and we discharged a couple today. So 13 patients. One of my interns has the day off tomorrow.

I came home and mucked around on the computer for about an hour. Then I fell asleep on the couch. Now I’m up eating a little dinner and typing this. I feel greasy. After this, I’ll shower, and go to bed. Then I’ll get up and go to work. The next call day is Wednesday, which seems way too close. The good news is that I’m now officially half way done with this ward month. I’ve done 5 of the 9 calls. Only 4 to go. Next week the official countdown to being done will begin. Finally, at the end of the last call day, I may just wander down to the ER, jump on to the main consultant’s counter, throw down my white coat, and belt out “I’m still standing…” by Elton John. It would be a musical-type performance, with a lot of high knee stepping, hip-shimmying, exaggerated head shaking, and prancing - all the while pointing directly at stunned ER physicians. That would be fun.

Before I forget, I should mention that Saturday night was fun. Gwen and I went and saw David Cross up at the University of Washington, and he was hilarious. Sheer genius. He covered lots of topics, but basically he spent about an hour and a half bashing George Bush, right wing Christianity (and religion in general), republicans, and the myriad of heinous country songs that “emerged” circa September 11th. He read a parody of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech as George Bush might, and it was awesome. He ended with a parody of that awful “Proud to be an American” song which was funny beyond words. All was scathing and hilarious. An excellent night. I officially thank Eryn for bringing the man into my life.

And I’m spent.