Exhaustion
I'm tired, so tired. Makes me just want to sleep...
Which is what I should be doing instead of writing this. It has been a long day. I'm still in the NICU and I haven't caught up from last call night and I'm on call again tomorrow. Plus we have these evening learning lecture things that last until 8:30 two nights a week. I am at work from 5:30 am until 5:30 pm (at least) and then on call every fourth night (30 hours). It leads to exhaustion.
In addition, my roommate is gone so I'm cat-sitting and he is mad that I get home so late and always has a pile of poop waiting for me when I walk in the back door--sometimes two piles. What a way to make a statement.
In fact, that's what the babies do sometimes, too. Poop. But it's usually a good sign when they do.
The NICU is fine. Critical care, you know. Some of them are really sick. One very sick one came in today and the social worker had to call the priest to have it baptised quickly in case the likely outcome happened sooner rather than later.
Some of them are not so sick. We call them "feeders and growers." So the daily discussion goes something like this:
"Jones. Day of life 88. Adjusted age 36 and 1. Weight 2230. Up 30 grams since yesterday. FEN 145, 121, 3.1, smear. Eating MBM 20 with neosure. 34 q 3. Nippling 4/8." Then a crap load of additional vital signs and numbers that magically mean something. I've learned the new NICU language over the last few weeks. It's not so difficult; just a little dry.
Had my first day of clinic today, too. It is a combined med-peds clinic out in the boonies east of here. It was alright. I think everything looks not so great when I'm this incredibly tired. I'm just super irritable. I haven't had a day off in 10 days or something like that; then before that I worked 20 days straight. I'm tired.
Anyway, clinic was okay. I felt like a med student still. I don't even get to have my own panel of patients. And I was really looking forward to that. Good thing about that is that it's super flexible. Bad thing is that I don't get to have that experience. I might try it for this year and see if I can switch next year. We'll see. That would mean probably doing seperate medicine and pediatrics clinics on alternate weeks, which wouldn't be bad actually.
Plus I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Mike is right when he says that when you're tired is the worst time to think about it. Problem is, I don't know when I won't be tired.
Oh, and I have to take a four hour test tomorrow while I'm on call. Then was going to try to fly to San Jose for a wedding, but now the fellow wants me to be at work on Friday.
And all I want to do is sleep!
At least I snuck in a trip to the grocery store tonight. I got dark chocolate covered honey combs...among many other items. They are called Violet Crumbles in Australia. They're great. The store here sells them in the bulk bins. Yum.
Did I mention that I'm tired?
Oh, and I have no time to make or eat any real food, so I'm living off of Clif bars. They fit in my back pocket and I can eat them in under a minute. I just bought another 20 of them at the grocery store. Good thing they're still on sale. Eighty nine cents.
Keep in mind this is a tired rant. I'll feel better with some sleep...I hope.
Which is what I should be doing instead of writing this. It has been a long day. I'm still in the NICU and I haven't caught up from last call night and I'm on call again tomorrow. Plus we have these evening learning lecture things that last until 8:30 two nights a week. I am at work from 5:30 am until 5:30 pm (at least) and then on call every fourth night (30 hours). It leads to exhaustion.
In addition, my roommate is gone so I'm cat-sitting and he is mad that I get home so late and always has a pile of poop waiting for me when I walk in the back door--sometimes two piles. What a way to make a statement.
In fact, that's what the babies do sometimes, too. Poop. But it's usually a good sign when they do.
The NICU is fine. Critical care, you know. Some of them are really sick. One very sick one came in today and the social worker had to call the priest to have it baptised quickly in case the likely outcome happened sooner rather than later.
Some of them are not so sick. We call them "feeders and growers." So the daily discussion goes something like this:
"Jones. Day of life 88. Adjusted age 36 and 1. Weight 2230. Up 30 grams since yesterday. FEN 145, 121, 3.1, smear. Eating MBM 20 with neosure. 34 q 3. Nippling 4/8." Then a crap load of additional vital signs and numbers that magically mean something. I've learned the new NICU language over the last few weeks. It's not so difficult; just a little dry.
Had my first day of clinic today, too. It is a combined med-peds clinic out in the boonies east of here. It was alright. I think everything looks not so great when I'm this incredibly tired. I'm just super irritable. I haven't had a day off in 10 days or something like that; then before that I worked 20 days straight. I'm tired.
Anyway, clinic was okay. I felt like a med student still. I don't even get to have my own panel of patients. And I was really looking forward to that. Good thing about that is that it's super flexible. Bad thing is that I don't get to have that experience. I might try it for this year and see if I can switch next year. We'll see. That would mean probably doing seperate medicine and pediatrics clinics on alternate weeks, which wouldn't be bad actually.
Plus I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Mike is right when he says that when you're tired is the worst time to think about it. Problem is, I don't know when I won't be tired.
Oh, and I have to take a four hour test tomorrow while I'm on call. Then was going to try to fly to San Jose for a wedding, but now the fellow wants me to be at work on Friday.
And all I want to do is sleep!
At least I snuck in a trip to the grocery store tonight. I got dark chocolate covered honey combs...among many other items. They are called Violet Crumbles in Australia. They're great. The store here sells them in the bulk bins. Yum.
Did I mention that I'm tired?
Oh, and I have no time to make or eat any real food, so I'm living off of Clif bars. They fit in my back pocket and I can eat them in under a minute. I just bought another 20 of them at the grocery store. Good thing they're still on sale. Eighty nine cents.
Keep in mind this is a tired rant. I'll feel better with some sleep...I hope.
posted by S. at 9:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home