My month finally ended in the CVICU. Two months of it separated by a month of night float, during which I spent the days moving to a new apartment has left me sleep deprived in a very interesting way. I have become a sleep Zombie. Rather than un-dead, I’m un-asleep. My eyes feel like they’ve had sand blasted into them. I move slowly, deliberately without passion or innovation. I find it hard to summon emotion at times. My interns asked if I was angry. No, I just lacked the energy to care anymore.
Now, I have a month completely without call. My only clinical responsibilities are 4 half-day primary care clinics. The rest of the time is spent teaching medical students. I’m the Teaching Resident. After one day to judge by, I think I’m going to like this month. The students are excited to be learning and overall, the hours are quite nice. I’ll have a chance to bone-up on the basics and put together some stock lectures for any future teaching I might do. Oddly, all the sessions are monitored by either an attending and department secretary. I wasn’t expecting big-brother to be watching, which is a little intimidating, but both my talks today (completely impromptu because I wasn’t notified of certain details until the last moment) went fine.
I’m also back online with a new laptop. The old Gateway Vista machine we bought dirt cheap a few years ago started flashing a warning of immenent hard drive failure. Ikuko was generous enough to let me get a macbook with free ipod touch. I had forgotten how wonderful macs are in comparison to pc’s having gone without since my last macbook crashed on me. It is just a pleasure to use software that works, hardware that feels good to the touch and a complete lack of nagging warnings, junk software and adverts. It just works; me so happy.
