Rrrrrrrrring!

WAKE UP!

Wow, hello! The snooze is over! I have been on inpatient since Monday, and it is SO much busier/better than my outpatient experience was! My days usually run from about 6/6:30am-4:30/5pm. Then every 5 days my team (attending, resident, intern, me) is "on call", so we arrive at the hospital like normal at 6/6:30am but don't leave til noon the next day. I had call on Wednesday, and my team sent me home around 9:30pm, but I had to research about the patient that I got put in charge of so I was up til midnight, then woke up at 4:45am to get back to the hospital. Even thought I did get about 5 hours of sleep (maybe less, I toss and turn lately), I was tired come Friday (Thursday wasn't so bad, it caught up with me eventually though!).

We are on call again on Monday, but I can't stay overnight. I have lecture from 1-5pm on Tuesday that is mandatory, and I'm not allowed to get to the hospital at 6am Monday, leave there at noon on Tuesday, and still have to be at lecture on Tuesday afternoon...it interferes with duty hour restrictions. I can't be doing work/school stuff more than 30 hours in a row. But come my Saturday call I will be staying overnight AND not getting a day off that week (I work Mon-Fri, work all Sat until noon Sun, then work again Mon-Fri...phew!).

Needless to say I really like being more busy, but I still am only responsible for 1 patient at a time right now. So there is a LOT of reading time, which still throws me off. With the patient I had earlier this week that was fine because NO ONE had any idea what was going on (we finally decided autoimmune hepatitis with some unknown acute injury), but then they left the hospital against medical advice on Friday. So even though I got another patient on Friday, I'm still only at 1 patient. And the patient I got on Friday has something pretty straightforward (C. diff diarrhea), so hopefully I can get another patient on Monday...since we're on call I'm sure I will.

Medicine is a lot of sitting around and talking and looking things up on the computer, even for the resident and intern...not sure I really like that part. I just enjoy being with the patients and explaining to them what is going on with their body; my liver patient and family told me they really appreciated that I was going "above and beyond" to make sure they understood what was going on (even though I didn't really know much!) and told me not to lose my "awesome-ness". That made me feel pretty good.

Now I just need to get a little more motivation to study...I have started finally, but there is SO MUCH! Yikes!