Caffeine Free in Med 3

Call - AOx2

So I survived another night of call. It actually wasn't that bad of a night. I ran into various members of the anesthesia team, who don't seem to have a ton to do on the weekend w/o surgeries going on. They apear at Codes, intubate, and scamper away.

My intern - whom I love - told me a little after midnight to try to catch some sleep in the med student call rooms, and she'd page me if anything interesting happened. The med students call rooms are a total of 2 rooms with 4 beds in each room. So you are sharing 1 of 2 bunks with other people in the class, and when you drag yourself there late, you find an open bed, don't turn on the lights, and just collapse on that uncomfortable mattress w/o a pillow. You could be sharing your call room with your best friend, worst enemy, or love of your life and you wouldn't know because under NO circumstances are you supposed to wake up the other students.

After popping my contacts out and fighting to find a comfortable position while wearing my pager, I fell asleep around 1. Right before four I woke up with a page that said 'We're admitting a homeless bum. Help if you want.' So I shoved my contacts back in my bright red eyes, tried to not wake my roommates, and hoofed it to the ER. My intern wasn't there. I paged her, waited a while, and then walked back to our normal floor. She wasn't there. Then I remembered that she carries the team phone, so I could just call her. In fact, I could have called her the moment I got the page.

She told me she didn't page me, and nothing was happening. I looked at my pager and didn't see the page. However, in my half-awake state, I could have very easily just deleted the page, the same way I turn off my alarm clock. I mean, I forgot we had a team phone, and that the cancer service doesn't admit bums normally because most of them don't walk of the street with a cancer dx. Of course, I might not have been able to pass the mini-Mental Status exam in my just waking state. (Hmm, she appears to be AOx2)

Normally I would never think this, but maybe there just wasn't a page. Maybe I was that disoriented. Maybe I was sundowning . . .or since all our med school pagers have very similar numbers, it is very easy to mistype and send the wrong service the page. I know for a fact that a med student on psych - whose service regularly admits bums - is one digit from mine. I tend to doubt that I dream of hallucinogenic pages.

posted by Allie @ 2:59 PM