Halfway Done with Night Float... this time around

     Finishing out this last week of night float means I am officially halfway done with night float... this time around, anyway.  I will have another 4 weeks of night float later on in the year, and more night float over the next 2 years as well.  I have to say, as hectic as the nights can sometimes be, I am really enjoying night float!  The trickiest part is trying to adjust to working all night and sleeping all day.  This is easier for a single, childless person like me than it is for some of my colleagues who work all night (catching a couple of hours of sleep at best if we are lucky) and then go home and maybe nap for a few hours before getting up to spend time with their significant other and child(ren) before heading back into the hospital for their next shift.  Some families come and eat dinner in our resident's lounge so they get to spend a little bit more time together during waking, daylight hours, which is really nice!  As much as I would love to be married and have kiddos of my own, not having to worry about anyone other than myself on my off hours is definitely an advantage during this rotation!
     Last Wednesday I left work at 7:00AM and had an appointment to get my car inspected at 8... by the time it was done and I was home, showered and in bed it was 11AM, and I had to get up at 4 in order to get ready and make it to work on time... needless to say Wednesday night I was pretty tired.  So imagine my delight when things quieted down around 4AM and I was able to catch a few hours of sleep before I had to get up for sign-out at 6:30!  Ahhh, that was a lesson learned rather quickly.  While it felt great to lay down and get some rest, it totally threw off my finely balanced sleep schedule!  When I got home and in bed by 8AM Thursday morning, I quickly fell back asleep... only to wake up in a panic thinking "oh no, I'm late for work, people are counting on me!"... I looked at my clock, only to realize it was only 12:30 in the afternoon, and I still had 3 more hours to sleep.... by the time my adrenaline level returned to normal I probably only had about 2.5 more hours to sleep.  Moral of this story - no matter how quiet it gets, I won't be sleeping on night float anymore!
     It's still strange to me that it's even acceptable to sleep while at work... or even watch TV for that matter (even though the only thing on at 3AM is infomercial after infomercial).  It also seems like there's some sort of time warp... I'm only at work for 14 hours on average, then I head home and it feels like there should be time to do more than just shower, sleep, and get up/ ready again, but if I want to get 8 hours of sleep (and trust me, my co-workers and patients want me to) then that really is all I have time for.  I'm just thankful I have time to sleep that much.  It does end up meaning that a lot of things get put off until the weekend (vacuuming, reading, catching up on TV, cooking, emptying the dishwasher).
     This week involved a couple more c-sections, evaluating more women to rule out labor, admitting on average 2-3 people per night, and seeing fake patients in the office to get used to using the EMR system.  We admitted three patients on Friday night and I'm anxious to go back to work tomorrow and see how things went over the weekend - one person had a pretty serious illness, one had a mysterious illness, and one had a whole lot of things wrong with him.... I'm interested to get updates on all of them!
     While on night float, my office hours are Monday afternoons, which means that tomorrow afternoon I have patients in the office prior to working overnight in the hospital.  Last week they were fake patients... this week they are very very real....eek!  I think I might be more anxious about this than about a lot of my other new responsibilities as a doctor (other than OB stuff, perhaps).  I've seen probably hundreds of patients in the office as a medical student, but that was as a medical student, where I could comfortably say "you know, I'm not sure about that, but I'll mention it to Dr. so-and-so and see what he thinks."  But now, I'm going to be put on the spot!  Patients can and will ask you all sorts of weird things... some cousin's boyfriend's accountant's son had X condition and now they think their kid will too... or they read about Y treatment on the internet and are convinced they need to try it.  I don't want to give them a wrong answer and seem stupid in front of the preceptor afterwards (preceptor = the attending doctor we run our assessment and plan by before letting the patient leave the office), but more than that patients sometimes seem to have an uncanny ability to remember really random shit you tell them and take it as the gospel truth (except, of course, the patients who forget what you're saying as you're saying it).  I have two fairly straightforward appointments booked for tomorrow - an adolescent physical, and a diabetes follow-up...fingers crossed no one asks me anything I don't know how to answer!  Also, here's hoping I can work with the EMR system without seeming like a bumbling idiot or like a rude jackass for not making enough eye contact while internally cursing the system/ willing the computer not to  start smoking!