#post-call

[mdrambles]

I mean, I cried myself to sleep post-call but made myself pizza today and I feel better.

In response to, “How was your night?”

[doc-resilient]

Why Am I Drinking Coffee Post-Call: Tales From A War on Sleep

[whitecoatdiaries]

In the same breath, I love my work as much as I’ve ever loved anything. 

I love being the resident. How, at the end of the day, everyone else goes home. Case managers and attendings and pharmacists and even nurses, at the end of their shift. But I don’t leave until the work gets done. I beg pharmacies and insurance companies, schedule outpatient appointments, arrange for transportation, talk down stubborn family members, write and rewrite prescriptions, as if by sheer force of will I can heal and protect my patients. I reason and plead and say it matter-of-fact. I am here, at the end of the day, to make sure that what needs to get done is done, to do the dirty work, to explain to an angry family member for the 10th time why the procedure has been delayed, to call with updates, to take a deep breath in and say that even though we did everything we could to avoid it, it’s time for the breathing tube. 

I’m tired. It’s hard to write because my thoughts come sluggish and slow. I forget the grace of language, its liquidity, how to find a feeling and encircle it gently without pinning it down. I don’t know the day of the week anymore, whether its night or day, early morning or late evening. I drift along, all brain and no body, falling into a dead dog sleep when my work is done. 

I fell in love with the idea of being a doctor the summer after college, when I was so full of despair that it was intoxicating to lose myself in someone else’s life. In the ensuing years I’ve created a life for myself that I have no desire to escape from, so this getting-lost feels good but in a different way than it did before. A. tells me to be careful, that the MICU is addicting. There’s nothing to flee, my life overflowing with love, but there’s something about dedicating one’s waking hours to a singular purpose that still quenches a complicated thirst, a long tongue on the salt-lick. 

I wonder if I belong on the face of this aching earth. My heart stays broke. But none of this has ever stopped me before and I’ll be damned if I’m not up early tomorrow, doing my stretches and saying my small and fruitless prayers and putting on my scrubs, swiping my badge and striding into the unit, my sleeves rolled up, ready to do whatever it is that needs to be done. 

[mdrambles]

Clerkship Pearl (but not actually)

Your ID badge cannot function as a Presto card, nor will it unlock your front door.

[mdrambles]

The satisfaction of a post-call shower is truly one of the greatest pleasures in life

[reachforthenorthernlights]

Laying in the back of the ambo after a call praying that my meclazine kicks in soon 😷🚑🚨

[md-admissions]

Oh wow that was a trash patient presentation I just did but I am so emotionally and physically tired that I don’t even know where I want to begin with myself.

I’m going to just drag my butt back home and sleep. *update: and the senior resident on call with me was dismissed before me??? WHAT?