Well, this is all pretty blurry now. Yeah, the "Fact" is that I'm majorly sleep deprived. I'm sitting here writing on the laptop in a hospital room that is used for employee sleep rooms. Two hospital beds and a night stand and two non-working TVs. Not that I had any time to watch TV. Anyway, starting at a few minutes before midnight... the time is important, 'cause that's the last call that I'm gonna have on the next paycheck... I got called. I had just laid down and I was almost asleep when the pager went off... this is a pattern that will repeat constantly during the weekend, I fear. Every hour on the hour. Just like a news broadcast. The ED skipped an hour at 02:00, but ICU stepped up to the plate for them and then the ED continued where it had left off. Once again, I enjoyed working with my old-time buddies on the night shift. Speaking of which, there is a rumor going around that they are gonna hire another night-shift tech, and have two on full-time. When I left that position, I said that if that ever happened that I would be willing to come back... luckily, nobody remembers me saying that, or at least they won't hold me to it. About 09:00 I was all done with patients, so I went up to the sleep room once again. I actually got to sleep for about fifteen minutes and then the fire alarms went off. Something about the kitchen, I just listened enough to know that I wasn't in any danger if it was real, which is never is. Settling in, once again I was right on the verge of sleep when the pager went off. I went home about 20:00 to take a shower and change clothes again, then I wrote the following after returning to the hospital: Ddamn! Yep, that's a double-d ddamn. It actually started off as a typo, but y'gotta do with what you have....
Sucky, this day has been. Luckily, I hadn't ever finished yesterday's entry, because I neglected to mention how sucky yesterday was... I can make that correction before I put that baby to bed.
Well, really, the main thing that sucked was the fact that I haven't had any sleep... yep, none... since I got up on Saturday morning. Yeah, I know, whine, whine, whine, that's all I do.
well, my dear mother told me to find something that you do well and then stick with it... so there!
OK, the last 24 hours, approximately, in a capsule: work, attempt to sleep, work, attempt to sleep, work... you got the idea, right?
There was one time when I really did get to sleep maybe about fifteen minutes before the fire alarm woke me up. Then I was just about asleep again when the beeper went off.
There were about five times that I was almost asleep when they paged me. That is *so* frustrating! But I was not deterred in my pursuit of sleep, I did keep trying.
I left at 20:30, telling everyone that I was going home and change my clothes and take a shower, and everyone agreed that that was a necessity... so I did that, and, knowing that there were patients waiting, I got back to the hospital in 90 minutes, just when the first patient was ready.
I have had a mix of inpatients, emergency patients and ICU patients throughout the weekend so far, mostly medical stuff but a coupla trauma patients in there after I got back from my shower... I really needed something to get the adrenaline going, and that helped.
38 sleepless hours. And I'm still going. At some point, the *thinking* process has been replaced by the simply *doing* process. This is not necessarily a bad thing, 'cause somewhere in my brain, if something looks wrong, the thinking part kicks back in pretty quickly. And of course, the trauma patients always get the adrenaline going. Adrenaline isn't always a good thing, though... makes it hard to get to sleep, it does. Not that there has been a chance to test that assertion today.