Comment on a night shift (the first of many)

So I just want to point out that I've been awake for almost 24 hours. I woke up yesterday afternoon (Saturday) at 2:30pm, and it's now 1:30pm (Sunday). I'm laying on the couch (futon) with my legs propped up on the back of it trying to drain the fluid from my puffy 'i worked 3 nights in a row and drank way too much diet coke' feet. I'm also sorta watching HGTV because they have all of these great real estate shows on and I love real estate shows-it keeps me up until the wee hours of the night more nights than I can count. But lets start at the beginning.

Last time I blogged I was preparing to start my first of 3 nights in a row. This is not a big deal because I often work 3 nights in a row. I just started a night 'agreement' (not a contract) to work 2 nights and one day a week, at the end of 16 weeks if I have worked my obligatory 2 nights/week I get a bonus. It's pretty sweet for me since well, I was not doing well flipping back and forth. I feel like I've written this all before. I think my heart is fluttering around, too much caffeine. Anyway so I like my night shifts-and here's why-

Night shifts have a different feel than day shifts. Day shifts are busy because you have kids going for surgery (since we're basically a surgical NICU) or for studies or radiology stuff or whatever, and traveling with these kids isn't easy. And you have the entire care team coming around to each bedside. The care team consists of the attending, the residents (they travel in swarms I'm not even kidding), the NNP, the dietician, sometimes OT/PT, sometimes Social Work. And then you have people coming to work with the kids, plus parents coming in, and then your roommates have stuff going on and so you help them too and it makes for a busy day but it goes by fast.

Nights are a little slower. Well, it feels slower because there aren't so many people running around-there's only 1 attending, a couple of NNP's, and the residents are usually only running around in 2's rather than swarms. And unless your kid is going for emergency surgery or is a new admit needing emergency surgery, there's really no traveling. You can be busy just keeping the kid alive if he's really sick, or keeping him happy if he's irritated, and that can be crazy, but the biggest challenge is staying on top of your A-game when your body knows it's not natural to be functioning at all hours of the night.

We can do some fun things on nights if we're not running crazy. University Hospital (which we are connected to via a glass walkway) has a Starbucks that is open 24/7-it's kind of fun to walk over there and get a drink (nonfat steamer for me please) at 3am (I haven't been able to do this for awhile but it's a fun time). And then if you have friends working it's fun to go to lunch together and talk about the latest britney escapades that are being hashed out on CNN. And of course when the crying gets to be too much you can go visit your friends in other rooms to get a break. Usually around 4am it gets hard to be awake but we work through it.

These last three nights have been pretty fun. Thursday night there were treats at the front desk, and I gave in and had yet another sugar cookie, plus Rachel gave me sugar cookies for working for her and Jane gave me a little goodie bag with one of her homemade oreos in it-and seriously at 5am I had a sugar crash. I need to control it. Emilee worked that night so that was fun-we got into a rousing discussion with Matt during our lunch about....well I don't remember what it was about but I know that I was all kinds of worked up. Friday morning the drive home wasn't too bad-I didn't kill anyone in my sleepiness, and I watched Lost when I got home. And still managed to work out Friday afternoon.

Friday night Jane was supposed to work but she traded to work Friday day since they were short, and so I was bummed because we have fun working together. But my spirits were lifted when Stacey came walking towards the elevator after I clocked in, and Stacey=diet coke run early in the shift. This was followed a couple of hours later by lunch, where I was talked into sharing potato munchers or our friendship would end. Potato munchers are something everyone loves, they're these fried things and the inside is hashbrown with velveeta cheese. I'd never had them before because I'm anti buying food at the hospital because I don't want to be eating grilled cheases every night, which is what I would eat, if I bought food. Back to the munchers-they tasted really good and I thoguht it would make me sick (my usual night shift meal consists of oatmeal, yogurt, string cheese, and sugar-free pudding, and an apple for the 5am energy drop), but it didn't.

Saturday morning