#42 / #43: Christmas Eve Call and more
Happy New Year!
I took call on Christmas Eve, which wasn't so bad because we normally don't celebrate Christmas. Growing up Jewish, my family and I used to celebrate Christmas by going to see a movie and getting Chinese take-out. When my wife and I started dating, I've spent every Christmas (up until this year) at her parent's house in Pennsylvania. Since she and her parents are Jewish as well (but secular) they don't celebrate Christmas either and instead we have been renting a movie and getting take-out Indian food. Don't feel bad for us for missing out on the Christmas tradition that everyone experiences - we have a great time.
Christmas Eve call was pretty cool because there were three cases that I got to scrub on. The first was a really disgusting case in which someone was so fat that she got skin infections all over her body, and we debrided those areas of skin and put a wound vac on her (the wound vac sucks out all the fluid out of the wound and allows it to heal faster and better.) The second case was a splenectomy. The third case was an abdominal closure on someone who was brain-dead and his family withdrew life support later in the evening.
So the day itself was pretty busy, but the evening was not. My wife came to visit and we hung out for a while around the hospital. I got a series of calls throughout the night that I could basically ignore (I didn't have to physically do anything.) and I got about 6 hours of sleep.
The next call night was on Wednesday, the day before my four days off over New Years. This call night was not very busy but I was covering about 6 pediatric surgery patients and each of the patient's nurses called me incessantly from 4 PM to 11 PM. The majority of the calls were totally not important at all. Once I finished tidying up the pediatric surgery service, I watched some TV until 1 AM and went to bed. However, I got woken up by a semi emergency. One of our patients who we knew had aspiration pneumonia had low oxygen levels all of a sudden. I spent some time working her up and ended up transferring her downstairs to the intermediate care unit. By the time all of that happened it wasn't worth going back to sleep and so I just started pre-rounding for the next day. I was pretty tired, but I had the next four days off so I didn't care!
Last call night: Sunday December 24th / Wednesday December 27th.
Amount of sleep: 6 hours / 1 hour
Currently reading: Starting serious review for ABSITE exam.
Currently watching: Miami Hurricanes versus Nevada (in HD) Go Canes!
Currently listenintg to: Sufjan Stevens.
Next call night: Tuesday January 2nd.
I took call on Christmas Eve, which wasn't so bad because we normally don't celebrate Christmas. Growing up Jewish, my family and I used to celebrate Christmas by going to see a movie and getting Chinese take-out. When my wife and I started dating, I've spent every Christmas (up until this year) at her parent's house in Pennsylvania. Since she and her parents are Jewish as well (but secular) they don't celebrate Christmas either and instead we have been renting a movie and getting take-out Indian food. Don't feel bad for us for missing out on the Christmas tradition that everyone experiences - we have a great time.
Christmas Eve call was pretty cool because there were three cases that I got to scrub on. The first was a really disgusting case in which someone was so fat that she got skin infections all over her body, and we debrided those areas of skin and put a wound vac on her (the wound vac sucks out all the fluid out of the wound and allows it to heal faster and better.) The second case was a splenectomy. The third case was an abdominal closure on someone who was brain-dead and his family withdrew life support later in the evening.
So the day itself was pretty busy, but the evening was not. My wife came to visit and we hung out for a while around the hospital. I got a series of calls throughout the night that I could basically ignore (I didn't have to physically do anything.) and I got about 6 hours of sleep.
The next call night was on Wednesday, the day before my four days off over New Years. This call night was not very busy but I was covering about 6 pediatric surgery patients and each of the patient's nurses called me incessantly from 4 PM to 11 PM. The majority of the calls were totally not important at all. Once I finished tidying up the pediatric surgery service, I watched some TV until 1 AM and went to bed. However, I got woken up by a semi emergency. One of our patients who we knew had aspiration pneumonia had low oxygen levels all of a sudden. I spent some time working her up and ended up transferring her downstairs to the intermediate care unit. By the time all of that happened it wasn't worth going back to sleep and so I just started pre-rounding for the next day. I was pretty tired, but I had the next four days off so I didn't care!
Last call night: Sunday December 24th / Wednesday December 27th.
Amount of sleep: 6 hours / 1 hour
Currently reading: Starting serious review for ABSITE exam.
Currently watching: Miami Hurricanes versus Nevada (in HD) Go Canes!
Currently listenintg to: Sufjan Stevens.
Next call night: Tuesday January 2nd.
posted by Stephen Maturin @ 1/01/2007 10:27:00 AM
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