Day (techinically Night) in my life

[inked_caduceus]

24 hours in 60 pictures, again, with very careful crops to avoid massive HIPAA violations.

For reference, here's the previous years:
2010,
intern year
2009,
4th year med school
2008,
3rd year med school
2007,
2nd year med school
2006,
1st year med school


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My "day" starts at 4:39 PM, when my lovely husband comes to get me out of bed. We chat for a few minutes about house stuff and plans for the weekend, as this will be the only time we see each other until tomorrow.


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Followed by getting cleaned up and some internetting.


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The dogs are helping. They've been especially spoiled lately, since my husband's home all night, and I'm home all day. Mostly, they sleep in bed with us - the lazy gits.


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But I'm out the door. The perk of night float is that I wear scrubs every night, which are like pyjamas that you're allowed to wear out of the house.


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The view is lovely on the way in to work. Definitely better than the ambulance bay as I pull in to the hospital, 4 buses already at 7 PM is a bad sign.


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I swing through the ICU to pick up the MET team pager from the daytime resident, as I'll be the MD on with them tonight in addition to being in the ER.


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Next stop is the resident lounge, where Wes is on cardiology and waiting on one last consult. Shannon and Jess are the day team coming off duty, pulling up the patient lists so they can update me on any issues to follow up on.


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Thank GOD for leftovers. Available food in the hospital at night is... not great.


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After taking a peek at the census, the patients start rolling in. I grab a cup of coffee and head down with Shannon, the overnight intern.


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I find Kurt, our ICU resident already down there. He and I go over a terrible Diabetus Insipidus patient who had a sodium of 190 (most people go utterly mad and will try to drink out of a pig trough at about 155)


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I staff the first patient with the intern and med student (hence the short white coat) and head out into the ER trauma area to see them for myself.


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Repeat the above sequence of events ad nauseum. I take a quick break to run up to the ICU and get some supplies to put a central IV in my patient's jugular, as they happen to be sick as stink.


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Heart failure (see enormous heart on the chest x-ray) and sepsis is a bad combination. While I'm waiting for my intern to finish up, I hang out with one of the ICU nurses for a minute, amused by her solution to pain control in the ER - dilaudid taped to her name badge. (a narcotic pain med 5 times stronger than morphine)


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Time check reveals that nearly half the night is gone, and I take a quick break for food while continue to write up patient histories.


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But there's no rest for the wicked - the MET pager goes off and I run up to the 3rd floor to check on a hypotensive patient.


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Aaaand more patients roll in. I send intern number one to bed, who tags in Adam, who I've been working with all night. In the meantime, I run into one of my buddies, a surgical resident destined for plastics. He was talking about a patient satisfaction study he's doing about breast augmentation, hence the pose.


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Chest pain. Story of my life, man. I run back to check on the hypotensive patient once more and am happy to see they're doing better. Fluids fix everything!


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Attempted time check on the pager. I feel the same way. Of course, that's beside the point because I get an update about another patient on the floor with a heart rate of 150. We pulled in the crash cart and put them on the defibrillator, but thankfully there was no shocking, just some good old fashioned adenosine - 97 is much better.


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And with that, my night starts to calm down. I stop taking admissions at 6 and give report to the post-call team (seen here in Savannah St. Patty's day regalia. Good thing our scrubs are green!)


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Time to finish up the last of the notes and make sure all the labs I ordered overnight came back ok.


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I get the last patient tucked in just in time for our housestaff meeting. Again, very excited to see free food, but I pretty much stick to orange juice.


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Because I have a few nervous knots in my stomach, especially about number 3 on the agenda - Chief Resident selection. I put my name up for nomination a month ago, and it's being announced today. I get one of the positions! Very exciting. :) Pose for a quick picture with one of my other co-chief residents, Jess. We're going to have a ton of fun, even if it will be crazy work.


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With that, my shift is over and the ambulances are still piling up as I walk out through the ER. But that's someone else's job at this point, time for me to go home, as I will be back in less than 10 hours.


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Home sweet home. Evidently husband bought us new hanging plant baskets on his day off. I try to make the dogs sit for a nice picture, and this happens instead.


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I update twitter with the news before bed and cash out with Glee. Big day, hope everyone enjoyed it!