The Wards – Day 25

Poised on the eve of Mega-Call. At the end of my first week of wards (Day 5), I took a mega-call and it was heinous. Now, it’s all that stands between me and freedom. Sweet, sweet freedom from the wards. At least for awhile. See my earlier post about Mega Call, but, in a nutshell, one team gets the shaft each week (on a 3 week cycle) and you end up taking 12 hours worth of patient’s from the night float (to be checked out and handed over at 6:45 am tomorrow) and then admitting patients for another 24 hours after that. The last mega call was my worst call of the month. I’m hoping this one goes a little better. I’ve scheduled my 4th and final day off out of the 28 days of wards for this Sunday. So the nice thing is that when I walk out of the hospital bleary eyed on Saturday, I won’t have to go back until Monday and I’ll be on a different rotation. Oddly enough, my schedule was switched and so starting Monday I’ll be doing 4 weeks of ER. Ah, the irony. It will be ME paging all my friends in other services to come down and get some pain. And yes, I’ll even have to wear the damn purple scrubs.

Other than work, there hasn’t been much. I worked 79 hours the first week, 56 hours the second week (had 2 of my 4 days off that week!), 83 hours last week, and I’ll probably be at about 85 or so after the call tomorrow for this week. This week has been steady. My last day off (last Friday) seems a long way away. The worst of it is the physical aspect – I’ll definitely need to catch up on sleep. Plus, as the weeks have gone by, I’ve stopped eating well, resorting rather to quick foods and comfort foods. I’m out of shape as my only exercise has been basketball, once a week for about 1.5-2.0 hours. I’ve made it out each week, luckily. I worked out one additional time the entire month. Five workouts over one month. No snowboarding. My body is pissed.

But that should turn around next month. The ER is “shift work” and the shifts are about 9 hours apiece. I think I have about 18-20 shifts over 28 days, which makes it a very hours-light rotation. I guess the one thing about ER is that you tend to work at any crazy hours on any day so the schedule will constantly shift. But only 9 hours. I can do 9 hours standing on my head at this point.

But now it’s bedtime. I’ve already said too much. I’ve stayed up far too late. For Mega Call is a harsh mistress…