I'm Tired

I was on call this past weekend. This means that you're rotating through 1st, 2nd, or 3rd call on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. When you're on 3rd the odds are quite low that you'll have to do anything because there are 2 coordinators ahead of you. 2nd call the chances increase, and 1st call you better believe you're going to be working. I worked all three days and nights this weekend. And eleven people have brand-spankin' new o.rgans. So it's all good. The thing is, I work past the point of exhaustion. I get tired, and then I work for two more days non-stop. Because that is my job. But I've realized as of late, that when I get that tired (which generally happens about once a week at least), I get crazy. C-R-A-A-A-Z-A-Y. I get cranky, and paranoid, and depressed all at the same time. Let me tell you people, it's not a winning combination. I hate being that way.

The first night of sleep deprivation I spent the whole night on the phone for work. Talking to nurses and lab guys and our surgeons. Everyone has horror stories about each of our surgeons and their tempers. To this point I have had no reason to complain about any surgeon. They have all been super-nice to me, they joke with me, they carry stuff for me (which I'm told is something they never do) and all that jazz. Well, I guess I can consider myself initiated, because Friday night I got my first dressing down. One of the surgeons flat-out swore at me. Repeatedly. So I get off the line with him, and talk to the answering service lady...tell her what happened...she tries to be supportive...says being tired is no reason to yell at me, we're all tired, you know...the kind of stuff you say to make someone feel better. Then an hour later, I ask her to page a different surgeon for me. She pages the one that yelled at me and puts him on the line.

Dr. That Swore At Me: "Yes?"
Me: oh holy God what does he want now? "Hi doctor, what do you need?"
DTSAM: "You're the one that called me!!"
Me: why me? "Oh, I think there was a..."
Answering service girl: "Doctor, I'm so sorry, I paged the wrong person. That's my bad."
DTSAM: "FOR GOD'S SAKE ARE YOU GUYS ALL MORONS??!??"
Me: Please just let me die now. "I'm so sorry doctor."
DTSAM: *CLICK*
Me: "GIRL! Why in the world did you page him?!? Are you trying to get me KILLED??!"
ASG: "Honey, I am so sorry. (chuckling softly) I was telling J (other ASG) about him yelling at you while I was paging the other doctor and I guess I paged him since I was talking about him."
Me: "Wow. Yeah. Don't ever do that again. I think next time he might just stab me through the phone."

The second day I worked in the OR with my favorite surgeon, Dr. Australian Cutie Pie (Dr. ACP.) I hope to one day reach a millionth of his cool level. Because he is so cool. At one point during the surgery, he withdrew the line that was reading the blood pressure for us, because it was in the way.

Abdominal surgeon: "Um, Dr. ACP, I'm going to need to know the pressure."
Dr. ACP: "Oh, you don't need that machine to tell you the pressure. I'll tell you right now."
Places two fingers on the aorta...the aorta coming out of a beating heart in an open chest
Dr. ACP: "Pressure's 101."
Me: "No way. You did not just take a blood pressure with two of your fingers."
Dr. ACP: "Oh yeah Sam. You do this for twenty years, you learn to tell a pressure any way you can. Besides, they've done studies with those machines, you might as well be shaking an 8-ball to get your pressure. It's like a random number generator those things. I'm much more accurate."
15 minutes later
Dr. ACP: "Pressure's down to 95"
Me: "Now you're just showing off."
And he winked at me.

Other recent highlights included The 4400 marathon on Sunday- why is this show not more popular? People blog about "America's Next Top Model" and stupid "24" but no one's keeping up with this AWESOME twisty show!?? I watched pretty much the entire marathon and let me tell ya, I am hooked. There were several times throughout the day that I just threw something across the room, yelled "NUH-UH!" and had to call someone to tell them how great this show is. The new season starts Sunday. Get ready folks. There will be updates. Because you should be watching this show. It's good. G-E-W-D. That good.

Finally, we had many many meetings at work today. One meeting included my boss telling my favorite loose-cannon coordinator that perhaps he should find someplace else to work. You don't say that kind of stuff to loose-cannon guy. If I wasn't so damn tired I would've been highly entertained. :) So, I guess that's about it. Laters!