For the next four weeks, I will live the vampire lifestyle, or at least keep the same hours. I am assigned to do the graveyard shift: from 10:30 pm to 8:30 am the next morning. The shift started in the middle of the first week and goes for seven nights straight. I then have seven days off, followed by another block of seven nights, then I have five days off before starting back on regular schedule. So, in four weeks, I will actually be working for fourteen days.
So during the fourteen days when I will be working, my sleep cycle will be upside down and turned completely around. Having done night shifts during my emergency term, I now have a bit of experience on how to ensure I have a good day of sleep in between my shifts. I have made my room into a bat cave: windows are shut, blinds are closed, heavy curtains ensure that as little light as possible leaks in, add eye shades from long-haul flights, and my brain will think it’s the middle of the night even during high noon. I set the radio to the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company, similar to NPR in the States) to serve as background noise. Ear plugs are handy for when the neighbors decide to rev up their cars. For the first couple of shifts, Phenergan just makes the quality of the sleep a little bit better without me feeling groggy when I wake up in the evening.
I actually think doing the graveyard shift allows me to have time for other things. I can wake up in the late afternoon or early evening and still have time to go to the gym, visit friends, and leisurely cook my meals before I start my shift. The downside is that, the weekend, when everyone is out, is the middle of the week for me and I have to follow the same sleep routine. It does not matter how gorgeous the day is or how inviting the beach may be, I have to go straight home for bed after my shift.
To push my sleep schedule back, last night I stayed up until 5:30 am before dragging myself to bed. I had a decent day of sleep today, so tonight I will start pretty fresh. But I know it will be a struggle by 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. But that’s when my good friend joe will come to my rescue – a couple cups of it, and I can stay awake at least until sunrise. Then it’s pretty much smooth sailing to the end of the shift. Unless, of course, if the arrest pager goes off.
Okay, my shift is about to start; think positive: no arrests tonight, no arrests tonight…
Showing posts with label internship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internship. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
I’m Still Alive!
Yeah, I am still here. It has been over six months after the last entry on my blog; now I am back.
Short summary of what happened in the last six months. I worked. Okay, you are all caught up now. Here is a little more detail if you are interested.
My first term was in vascular surgery – arguably the busiest term in the whole hospital, so it wasn’t exactly a way to ease into this back-to-full-time-work-and-trying-to-be-a-doctor internship thing. Having been thrown into the deep end, I basically spent the whole ten weeks trying to keep my head above water. Fortunately for me, I was in a team of incredibly good registrars and resident. So despite the hectic days, I felt like I was very well supported. The hours were grueling – by non-North American standards – from sixty-five to seventy-five hours per week. I felt like I only came home to sleep. So I spent the time that I had off either cycling along the beach or up the mountain or going to the beach with a book.
During that time a half dozen or so blog entries gathered in my computer and I never got around to finishing them. The perfectionist in me just would not allow myself to put them online without editing. And so in my computer they languished – half done, clumsy, and not fit to see the light of day.
My second term was in emergency. I had a blast! The work was interesting; the team was good to work with, mostly; one of the consultants has the ability to make interns feel like the most inadequate person in the world. I always stuttered when I handed patients over to that consultant. The hours were awesome: each week consisted of four ten-hour shifts and three days off. Having come from vascular surgery, forty hours per week felt like a holiday. So I treated my days off like holidays: biking, going to the beach, reading non-medical books, going to the gym (and sauna), going to Sydney, etc. My blog continued to sit idle. It had already been a couple of months, my unfinished entries were still waiting to be edited, but they were getting lower and lower on my priority list. I figured: who reads it anyway?
I was in the States last month on my annual leave. A couple of friends I saw mentioned that they hadn’t seen anything new on my blog. I even got emailed from some random person asking about it. So apparently people do read it.
All right, now that I have left my blog static long enough to have lost all three of my readers, I am going to give it another go.
Short summary of what happened in the last six months. I worked. Okay, you are all caught up now. Here is a little more detail if you are interested.
My first term was in vascular surgery – arguably the busiest term in the whole hospital, so it wasn’t exactly a way to ease into this back-to-full-time-work-and-trying-to-be-a-doctor internship thing. Having been thrown into the deep end, I basically spent the whole ten weeks trying to keep my head above water. Fortunately for me, I was in a team of incredibly good registrars and resident. So despite the hectic days, I felt like I was very well supported. The hours were grueling – by non-North American standards – from sixty-five to seventy-five hours per week. I felt like I only came home to sleep. So I spent the time that I had off either cycling along the beach or up the mountain or going to the beach with a book.
During that time a half dozen or so blog entries gathered in my computer and I never got around to finishing them. The perfectionist in me just would not allow myself to put them online without editing. And so in my computer they languished – half done, clumsy, and not fit to see the light of day.
My second term was in emergency. I had a blast! The work was interesting; the team was good to work with, mostly; one of the consultants has the ability to make interns feel like the most inadequate person in the world. I always stuttered when I handed patients over to that consultant. The hours were awesome: each week consisted of four ten-hour shifts and three days off. Having come from vascular surgery, forty hours per week felt like a holiday. So I treated my days off like holidays: biking, going to the beach, reading non-medical books, going to the gym (and sauna), going to Sydney, etc. My blog continued to sit idle. It had already been a couple of months, my unfinished entries were still waiting to be edited, but they were getting lower and lower on my priority list. I figured: who reads it anyway?
I was in the States last month on my annual leave. A couple of friends I saw mentioned that they hadn’t seen anything new on my blog. I even got emailed from some random person asking about it. So apparently people do read it.
All right, now that I have left my blog static long enough to have lost all three of my readers, I am going to give it another go.
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