Hot June Nights....

Finally on the night shift at Legacy...3 weeks away from being done with rotations FOREVER!

Started the night shift last night (Saturday) which was super rough...I hadn't managed to sleep in as late as I wanted to, so I had already been awake for 9 hours before I started my 12 hour shift. We had 11 traumas last night, which means that aside from a 45 minute lull where I ate a sandwich at 9:30pm, I was running around in the ED all night. There wasn't anything too exciting, the usual drunk suspects, including an 18 year old kid, who while celebrating his high school graduation with his friends, accidently got stabbed. I guess that's why mom says "don't play with knives." I sewed up a couple of facial lacs on a drunk guy who kept telling me (in Spanish) that my eyes were beautiful (and then would laugh hysterically for no reason), and I got to do the whole trauma evaluation (head to toe) on the kid who got stabbed, because it wasn't really a trauma (so the attending left almost immediately), and the PA was busy closing up his wound. Overall, a good night. By the time 6am rolled around I felt as though I was actually being more helfpul than not, which was nice.

I went home today and closed all the doors, shut the curtains and slept for 8.5 hours straight. Got up, quickly walked/ran the dog, showered, and back to work I went. Tonight I'm on with a different PA, who I'd initially thought was a bit cold, but as I've gotten to know her better, I've really enjoyed working with her. She's been a good teacher tonight and friendly, so despite no traumas (yet), I've quite enjoyed myself. We did get to go in on one surgery (she assisted, I observed), which was an emergency repair of a ruptured AAA. About 40 minutes into the surgery the time of death was called. The guy had lost so much blood, and the PA told me the rupture in his aorta was huge. His BP got down to 17/13, he was in v-tach and not responding to transfusions, epi or atropine. I'd like to say I was deeply saddened and really affected, but I wouldn't be cut out for this job if I was. I do hope he had the opportunity to say goodbye to his loved ones prior to the surgery.

So, for now I'm signing off and going to try and catch some shut eye...should probably be working on my assignment....

PS....this paper writing thing sounds awful, not looking forward to rotation 10!