Night Shift, Little to Do

Yesterday's shift was crazy, but today's was just plain boring. Nothing happened. For the first few hours, Anita and I had nothing to do but sit in the lounge practicing delivering babies with "Cletus", the model baby. There were few vaginal births, but several C-sections scheduled back to back. The first C-section was a high risk delivery with an HIV mom (they pronounced it "high-five" as to not alarm other patients) so we weren't allowed to sit in. Good thing, too, b/c during the surgery her uterine artery was lacerated and it took them about 2 hrs to stop the bleeding and fix it up. The attending, Dr. Boone (aka Dr. MB; he showed us the video on childbirth), later said there was so much blood "you couldn't see shit" and said he asked the anesthesiologist to give the patient more Versed to totally put her under b/c he was "throwing F-bombs everywhere" and didn't want her to hear. And if you remember this guy from lecture and can picture him saying these words, it sounded pretty hilarious. But he brings up a point: if any female med student or doctor were to have a C-section and hear stuff like "oh ****" on the other side of the curtain, they'll know something is wrong, and that's not a good feeling to have.

The second C/S was a delivery of twins, but neither of us went (I'd already seen a twin delivery). The third one was the delivery of a 27-week old so once again we weren't allowed in. Later Dr. D told us that Dr. MB wondered why no med students had scrubbed in on the C/S with the twins and suggested that we be more active in asking to scrub in on future C/S procedures. Easier said than done when the charge nurse makes us feel totally unwelcome in the OR; if she were nicer, I wouldn't be so hesitant to ask to scrub in. Anita did scrub in on a fourth C/S while I hung around and later helped Dr. K in a delivery by holding the patient's legs while she gave birth. Not as glamourous as delivering the baby, but still necessary.

Tonight was interesting in that Dr. B took Anita and me to the ER to see if there was anything "interesting" to see. Along the way, we saw Desiree in the hall, Doug at the ER for call (medicine), and Dustin D with another doctor talking to a patient. Three classmates in one night. One more night of night shift, and then I can live like a normal human again =)