Showing posts with label night float. Show all posts
Showing posts with label night float. Show all posts

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Having slept all day...

I'm....um...going to bed.

At least I'm consistent.

(Stupid night float...)

Friday, May 01, 2009

Ohmigodahmsotired.

Yeah. That.

But, because I actually have a lot to say (just...not the use of my words to actually say it...), I promise to make a real attempt at posting tomorrow. Meanwhile, enjoy this (sent to me by Bianca, but posted especially for Peng, who's unfortunatly for her on call tonight):

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Delirium

See, the thing about night float is that I never really know what day it is....

Who am I? What's going on? Where in the world did Thursday go????

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Fun with pictures

Call it Wordless Tuesday. Except with words. Lots of 'em.

So Sparrow and I are on together tonight. Which, so very rocks.

(PS - did I mention that Sparrow had a birthday last week? I think I forgot. She had her first 29th birthday this past week. We went out for "Asian Fusion" - if several days later - and it was yummy. The company was impeccable, of course, as well...)

(Ruthie's birthday is today, also. I made an impromptu little banner on our door using Post-It notes.)

(But I digress.)

So Sparrow and I are here. And we had a lot of funny, funny stuff come across our paths last night. So we decided to take pictures (you'll notice that all the patient identifiers are conveniently missing...).

Shortly after I came on, a direct admission came from one of the community hospitals. I went down, signed her in, talked to her a bit, and then came back upstairs and looked through the thick envelope of material that the outside hospital sent with her.

I found about twenty pages of MARs (medication administration records), which was ridiculous because this woman is on exactly ONE medication. And of course, they sent a big stack of nursing notes.

Notably missing? A discharge summary. Or, say, a psych consult note. But in case you were worried, we got her post-endoscopy nursing notes, too.

Absolutely essential to good psychiatric care.

They also...seriously, I almost fell off my chair when I saw this. This is not a diagnosis.

The word is hypokalemia. I mean, really. They are just makin' shit up at this point.

You know you're in good hands when your doctors start making up diagnoses just for you. That's a sure sign that they really know what they're doing.

Also waiting for me when I came in was this hand-off note:

Oh, but, be sure to notice the patient's age.

It's the the Playskool Trenchcoat Mafia out there. They're just starting younger and younger these days. Sparrow tells me she got a report from a parent the other day that some three year old girl was "pole dancing". Really? A three year old taking off her clothes. Astonishing. That's highly unusual. Toddlers almost never like to run around naked.

And furthermore, pole dancing is not an innate talent, unless you're a surgeon (inside joke. Sorry...). So if you find your little one working the pole at Gymboree...you've got ask yourself where she could possibly have learned that behavior.

I'm just sayin'.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Best response ever.

So I get called down to the ER to see this very cute little old lady with worsening dementia, who, fortunately for us (and her, because we have no geropsych beds right now, but we probably will tomorrow) also has a wide complex tachycardia. But, okay, I go down to consult, and know she's had an increase in auditory and visual hallucinations, and so we have the following exchange:

Me: Do you ever hear things that other people don't?

Cute old lady: Well, I hear this man singing in my ear. Only one person, and it's very faint.

Me: Oh, okay. Tell me, do you ever see things that don't make sense, or that maybe your husband doesn't see?

Cute old lady: Tomorrow.

(silence)

Me: Um...tomorrow?

Cute old lady: Yes. Honey, it's 2:00 in the morning. I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

I told her that was the best answer I'd ever gotten to that question. But I still made her tell me about the people she sees on her farm...

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Floaty

So I'm on Night Float again.

But.

You know what this is? Go on, guess.

It's my last week of Night Float ever. Let me repeat that: ever. Five more nights and then I will never pull another week of 12 hour third shifts again.

And even better than that? When I walk out of the hospital tomorrow morning, I'll be able to count the remaining nights I have to spend in the hospital without taking my shoes off (4 more NF + 6 calls = 10 nights in the big house).

(The thought makes me a little giddy, frankly.)

Now, does this mean I'll never spend another night in a psych hospital? Undoubtedly not. Because while I don't ever plan to be admitted (although, who knows...), I do expect that I might want to moonlight. But, when they're paying you $50 an hour, somehow that makes it all more worthwhile. And, it's a voluntary admission (if you will). I mean, right now, at least I have the keys, but...

The weekend was good, though. Yesterday Sparrow had us all over for some outdoor fun. The weather here's been crazy - when I went into work on Friday morning, it was 50 degrees out. So then my 2:30 walks in, right, and she's all sweating, and I was like, are you okay? Are you sick or something? And she looks at me like I'm completely insane, and says, "It's over 90 out there!" Yesterday was also in the 90s (as was today), but by 5pm it had let up a little. We played badminton in Sparrow's backyard. It was sweaty, but very fun. And then we talked and laughed and told war stories (because, what else do we do when you get us all together?) and soaked in the cooling night air and lit candles as the darkness fell and it was lovely. All we needed were some fireflies, but it's still a little early in the season for those.

Otherwise the weekend was generally uneventful. I tried to get some sleep today, but it didn't work so well. Fortunately, I had a three shot latte on the way in, which is making me a little buzzy at the moment (sometime around 4am, I expect to crash. We'll see). And I put my darkening curtains back up today, and have my fancy little eye mask, so, what else can a girl ask for?

I'm also contemplating what to do about the gym this week. Typically, on night float, I avoid it for fear that the activity will keep me up, but I've been going after work lately, and am wondering if it might be more to my advantage to go wear myself out and burn off that post-shift activation. Plus, I've concluded lately that what actually is more awakening is the post-gym shower (still, I hate to go to sleep all gross like that...). So, we'll see. Gomer and I are planning to meet on Wednesday on a contingency basis - i.e., if I'm completely delirious, I can cancel. I expressed my concerns about the activity being activating to him and he just smirked, and promised me that by the time he was done with me I'd be more than ready for sleep. This concerns me a little...

Alright. I should have referrals on the fax machine. Time to go do some work...

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Look! It's a sock!



I know, exciting, right?

I figured out how to link my blog to Flickr. And upload pics from my phone to Flickr. I also wrote my personal statement (well, the first draft. Er, second draft) for my fellowship application, managed to make Netflix work on my computer (instead of having to use Peng's), and even took care of a couple of patients. I just went up to see a guy on the floor who fell in the bathroom. This went much better than my little old lady Sunday night who broke her hip in much the same way. This guy, I said, "Do you have any problems?" He says, "I got kicked out of my apartment."

I was doing really well for a while here, tonight. I stopped on the way in and got a triple grande mocha. Amazingly, that held me until about 4:30. The past hour has been a little, um, less energetic.

I also spent a little time reading my old blog posts from last May, when I was on my Child and Adolescent rotation. It was sort of nice to rehash that....it was a hard time. Really activating, really difficult, really amusing.

Hmm.

Yeah, have I mentioned how bloody tired I suddenly am?

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Two and a half shifts

Night float, day 3. I'm not quite halfway through this week, yet, but I will be in less than four hours.

::sigh:: I wonder when my life will stop being a series of countdowns...

Monday, February 02, 2009

Things that seem hysterically funny when you've been awake all night.

Seriously. I had to turn the sound down to almost nothing, because otherwise I was laughing myself into hyperventilating fits.



Ahhh, those were the days, back before Doogie was gay. When Vinnie was annoying but kind of adorable, when gaggles of big-haired girls all secretly hoped Doogie would realize what a bitch Wanda was and dump her ass, and when Mrs. Howser was the original MILF to legions of boys in Hammer Pants.

Then again, I do still love me some NPH...

Tonight was the first night of Night Float, and it wasn't bad. I got all my dictations finished, all (er, well, most) of my filing done, and even saw a few patients. Some little old lady up on the floor broke her hip, and is off to the OR this morning, and she and the nurses are now in love with me and my liberal use of IV dilaudid for sweet little old ladies who fall and end up with impacted femoral neck fractures.

I'm a little more delirious than usual, though. I was supposed to see my shrink this morning, but then I called her to reschedule when I realized the last two sentences I'd written in the H&P I'd started at 6:30 on the patient I saw at 4:45 (it was now 7:30 at this point, if that tells you anything) made absolutely no sense. But I've since had caffeine (I couldn't help myself) and am a little more lucid, and, well, we'll see....

Tomorrow night (er, tonight, I guess, technically), I'm hoping for an equally calm night. Tyler's birthday is tomorrow (no, like, actual tomorrow, so, Tuesday, really), and Sparrow is on with me overnight, so she's bringing a cake to pull out at midnight. Plus, I really need to get some knitting done. And now that I've said that and angered the NF gods, well, I have this bad feeling we're going to admit the whole county...

Ooh. Wait. I live in this county. If I get admitted, maybe I could get some sleep....

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Backwards

Ugh, so, come tomorrow night, I start Night Float again. So, currently, it's 11:30, I'm awake and have all the lights on and I'm watching CSI to try and pass the time because, y'all, it's been a hellish long week and despite the very nice nap I took this afternoon I am tired and can't actually bring myself to do anything.

Bleh. I want to go to bed....

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Kate Standard Time

...is still a bit off. Much like the rest of me.

Last time I was on night float, it took me a week to recover my usual sleep schedule and not feel like I was barely getting through the day alive. I'm hoping this time will be easier, because on the whole, this time was easier. I fairly steadily slept from noonish to eightish. I actually ate meals this time, or at least I was better at it, rather than during my week in September when I never ate. I managed to get darkening curtains hung in my bedroom (albeit poorly, and with little spring-loaded rods, despite actually having the hardware and the real cafe rods), which I think helped a lot with the sleep. And the patient load wasn't overwhelming, which might be a function of volume, practice, exhaustion, or any combination of the above.

So, the week in recap...

The party last Saturday was awesome. Eva, Matt, and I were a marvelous model of the psyche - Matt pulled off the Clark Kent-esque inception of the Superego quite nicely. As I mentioned, Peng provided his cape:

Snazzy, huh? We also have great pictures of him in the muscle shirt I made.

Eva augmented the t-shirt I made her with spiky blue hair, really fabulous lace tights, stiletto heels, and...a big blue tutu. No, none of us are sure what, exactly, that has to do with the Ego, but, hey, she looked good. Her husband came wearing one of her slips, with pictures of Freud safety-pinned to it. He was, of course, a Freudian slip.

My costume consisted more or less of this:

I know, I know. Matt wasn't even out of his car yet (we got there at the same time) and he was like, "Wow. Wow. I'm not sure I've ever seen that much cleavage, ever. If you added up the sum total of all the boobs I've seen in my lifetime..." And then he kept trying to do things like set his beer bottle down in my cleavage all night. Eva was somewhat more direct...she just kept coming up and poking them.

We were a good team.

Other than that, though, and some overdone makeup (which wasn't actually all that garish, looking at the pictures) and purple glitter in my hair that ended up being more subtle than I thought it would be, I ended up not looking that much different from how I do at work. I wore jeans, because I couldn't find the skirt I wanted, I had my standard black sweater on, because it was cold that night...apparently I don't tramp up as well as I thought I was going to. Shucks.

There were a lot of other good costumes, too. There were three Sarah Palins, including Ed's wife, Georgia (Ed came as Todd Palin, so, she gets extra points for accessorizing), and Sparrow, who was such a dead-on Palin that I came close to breaking my no pictures of people on the blog rule, because, holy freakin' wow. I will break said rule, though, and show you Tyler's costume:

Yeah, low risk rule-breaking on that one, I know. It was a darn good time, though.

What else...the "disciplinary action" for invading my own privacy turned out to be a verbal warning. The very rude woman who emailed me initially and thought my "altering my record" by making sure my meds were up to date was such a heinous misuse of my access had cc'd her boss on the email. Who was much more reasonable. He and I had a nice sidebar in which he assured me that the actions I'd taken to give myself permission to view my own record were sufficient. Although I wonder if she heard about that, because in the email that followed all of this she ended it with this line: "Please do not contact me or Mr. Boss about this again."

Okay, so my initial reply to all this "disciplinary action" nonsense was rather scathing. In that incensed, over-intellectualized, sesquipedalian manner that I have (don't bother looking it up. It's a big word that describes the habit of using big words). Dude, whatever. It was MY chart.

The dimwit who cut herself on Wednesday actually did need a psych consult, by the way. It turned out to be a heck of a slash job. I had a similar "oh, I CANNOT believe they're calling us about this one!" consult on Thursday night ("This girl overdosed three days ago, although she's denying suicidality now, can you come see her?") which had a similar feel to it - I figured I'd give her the crisis service card and be done with it; instead, I talked to her for an hour and a half. I had the time, so...

Thursday night actually turned out to be the roughest, which may in part have been because I spent a reasonable portion of the evening wrangling a sick Ruthie ("Go to bed!" "No, I have to see this patient!" "No you don't, that's what the night float person is for, go to bed!" "Noooo!"). We did, however, get possibly the dumbest consult I've gotten, from the ortho service, on a guy who happened to be a State Hospital patient. Who, incidentally, was doing really, really well - a little demented, but, who isn't at his age? - until he fell and broke his hip while playing basketball. They called us, and were like, "Can you take him on your service?" Ruthie actually laughed at him. She was like, sure, if you want us to screw up all that work you did in the OR. We, uh, don't exactly take care of a lot of post-op hips on the psych wards. Not to mention, he was doing really, really well from a psych perspective. But, you know, by his very nature as a psych patient - scary.

::sigh::

Friday itself was an amusing day. I hung around at work until, like, noonish. I chatted with Karla, she and I talked politics with Matt and Kevin (both of whom are close to being "right-wing nutjobs," as Matt describes it). But they're both really intelligent guys and I like to talk politics with intelligent people who can stay rational and explain their differing points of view. Kevin, to my woe, actually voted for McCain. Because, you know, Obama isn't really "qualified" enough (He's over 35. He's an American citizen. That's all the "qualification" you need in this country. As for whether or not he'll be an effective leader - that's an innate quality. I suspect that his intelligence and practicality and perspective, not to mention that he will likely do a fine job filling his cabinet with good people, will serve him just fine. Indeed, the fact that he's not as steeped in Washington politics may well be an advantage. But I digress). Matt, on the other hand, made solid choices most of the way around, but did let me down just a little by voting for Liddy Dole. Who, you know, I used to support, back when she was head of the Red Cross and early in her stint as NC senator. But, wow, has she been a disappointment, particularly lately (If you haven't read about the ridiculous and libelous mudslinging she's been doing against opponent Kay Hagan, click here. It's completely disgusting).

I then wandered back towards my office to get my day planner, and got assaulted in the hallway with a needle by my friend John. Okay, fine, so it was a flu shot. No, literally, he was wandering the halls of our department giving people flu shots. And a darn fine job he did of it, too. I almost always insist on getting mine in my hip, since the OB nurses in med school taught me that hurts a lot less, but in the middle of the hallway? Not so much. But it was pretty painless. What can I say? The man's good with an IM.

I managed to stay up until almost 9pm Friday, which has also helped with the schedule reversal. My weekend's been pretty lazy, which has been rather nice, frankly, because I'm still really tired. But I haven't been totally useless. I made it to the Whole Foods yesterday. Jonagold apples - my very favorite up north - are in season, although down here they aren't quite the same. But that didn't stop me from buying a whole bag of them.

Wonder why they're chilling out in my laundry basket? Here's my sink, at the time:

Yeah. It looks better now, but I've since found at least another sinkful of dishes I missed. It was a long and delirious week.

Today I went out and shot ninety-some-odd environmentals at State Hospital. I'll put some of those up soon, but they need to be tweaked a little. The sun was a little too strong, so the lighting is off, and the fall colors weren't as good as I was hoping. I might wander down the road to Chatham county this week, see what I can find. I stopped at Target on the way home, because they had some really good deals in their ad this week. Including - finally - I got a new iPod. Now, it's not yet a real replacement for the one that's dying, it's just a little iPod shuffle. But it was, like, $40, they finally had it in pink, and look how cute and tiny it is!!

It holds like 200 songs and will be more than enough for my "commute" to work. I also got a new flash drive to replace the one Little Maxine used as a chew toy the last time she was over. It was $12 and holds two gigabytes. Remember when having a 1G hard drive was HUGE? Huge!!! Now, you can get twice that for the price of lunch and it's smaller than my pinkie.

So, that's the story, folks. Oh, and I still haven't picked out my next knitting project. Suggestions from the peanut gallery?

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Night moves

So, here I am again. Floating.

It's 4:30am and I'm waiting for the ER to call me about some dimwit who cut herself because she got into a fight with her boyfriend. She's saying (according to the ER notes) that it was impulsive and silly and she's not suicidal, so I don't really need to see her but $20 says they call me anyway. Technically, they're supposed to consult us on potential admissions; stuff like this they're supposed to be able to handle. And who knows, maybe they will. But they stole all her clothes and dressed her out in those silly blue paper scrubs we give to potentially suicidal people, and that's a very strong indicator that there's going to be a psychiatrist sometime in her near future.

Meanwhile, I blog.

It amazes me sometimes how much people don't want me around. I think I went from the one profession people really don't want to go see to the only one they want to see less. When I was a gyn, I had a woman tell me she'd rather get a root canal than have to see a gynecologist. As the shrink, I think most people would rather have a gynecologic exam. Some, I think, would rather have a gynecologic exam in Times Square than have to talk to me. People get so resentful that their "real" doctor called a psychiatrist to see them. Because my presence clearly indicates the other doctor thinks either, a, they're crazy, or 2, they're making it up. Not so, folks, not so. You wouldn't believe the reasons we get consulted (earlier tonight, Fang fielded a consult on a burn patient because she was crying. What?! Someone who's burned badly enough to end up in the ICU is - gasp! - crying?! Holy cow! Fire up the ECT machine, STAT! Seriously, though, I think "crying patient" is probably #4 or so on the list of reasons we get called by other inpatient services). What always makes me a little nuts, though, is the people who do things like, you know, try to kill themselves, and then get all pissy when someone calls a psychiatrist. Because, you know, they're not crazy.

Please. Like crazy is such a bad thing.

Is it bedtime yet?

So I've actually spent the evening seeing patients (and writing up long-ass interviews with same) and haven't gotten any knitting done. Which is a shame, because all I have left on my one project is the duplicate stitching and then I can felt it, but, I would've SWORN I had yarn needles in my desk, and alas, I do not. So sad. That's about all I can tell you about the projects I'm working on right now, though, because they're super top secret. Because I'm knitting for the CIA. No, okay, because they're gifts. But I promise pictures just as soon as I can post them.

I'm trying to decide what to put on the needles next. More simple socks? A throw for the new intern work area? An afghan? A new scarf? I'd really like to knit a nice thick sweater coat thing, but that seems like a fairly big undertaking, and I might not finish it until it's warm out...

Aaaand there goes my pager. Because they want a full consult on the dimwit. I got news for you, kids, it's not a committable offense to be stupid....

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Wordless Wednesday - take 1

So there's this thing that exists in the Blogosphere, Wordless Wednesday, where you're just supposed to show pictures that are fairly remarkable or something like that. I've been meaning to start doing that occasionally, and today, because I've GOT to get to bed, and (you are correct, Carol) the terms of the Blog 365 thing are such that I "can't" miss a day, it seemed like as good a day as any to start...

Coming soon, though, will be another real post about interesting things and knitting an such. Or at least, knitting and my usual amount of babbling...

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Oh, and PS -

Lest the Night Float Gods think I don't appreciate all this down time I've had the last two nights...I'm so lovin' it. I know it can't last the whole week, but...well, a girl could hope...

More please!

Okay, I'm going to do a couple more laps and then maybe some knitting....

Monday, October 27, 2008

Babbling the midnight oil

Night float, day 2...

I've seen exactly one patient, who was here when I got here, but you know what? I feel good about that patient. It was an adolescent that I took a long time with and I think I managed to get the situation to work in her best interest. It helped that there was a Pedes ER attending on who was just incredibly helpful and interested and invested in this kid.

You know...I have this soft little place in my heart for adolescents that I didn't have any sort of awareness of until this year. Previously, I mostly found them annoying and juvenile and always felt like they were making fun of me. I forget, though, what a complicated and tumultuous time adolescence is by its very nature. Add in screwy social circumstances or caretakers with limited parenting skills, and gosh, these kids just have so much trying to coalesce on them. And, you know, maybe it's the population of kids that I deal with, but I see so much...I don't know what it is. Energy, color, potential, intensity...so much raw possibility, this sort of effervescence of conflict and recombination, this complexity that's simultaneously developing and concluding... It's fascinating. And when you're underneath it, it's overwhelming.

I just don't see it in a lot of my adults. I mean, sometimes I see vestiges of it. Sometimes I see outright mature correlates, these peculiar and disorganized qualities come to fruition. But honestly, a lot of adults seem to have just lost this ineffable, diaphanous quality. Sometimes it seems like it's been sublimated into the unconscious, sometimes it seems like it's been partitioned off and redirected...but sometimes...in others...it just seems like it's gone. Like they've gone flat.

I don't know what that is. I don't know what it means. I obviously can't even describe whatever this is that I'm talking about with any degree of significant eloquence, but, well, it's 3 in the morning.

Does this make sense to anyone who lives outside my head?

Anyhow.

So the other interesting thing about my night has been this - when I got here and read my email, I discovered that I'm being audited for inappropriately accessing a patient's confidential medical records without a release of information on file. Which, I wasn't too concerned about, because, I figured it was one I opened on accident who had the same name as my patient, or, a patient I treated a while ago whom I was checking up on for continuity of care and, you know, silly things like learning. Until...until I got to the patient's name.

It's my record.

From the email conversation that's ensued, apparently, I'm being brought up for disciplinary action for - wait for it - violating my own privacy. And when I explained why I went in, that I added my medications which are prescribed by an outside provider, she told me that was a grave misuse of my access to the system.

Oh, come on.

So...apparently...it's an abuse of power to "alter" my medical record in such a manner. Because, you know, if one day, whilst I'm walking home, I get run over by the Chapel Hill Transit system (God forbid), and I wind up in the ER, all unconscious and bleeding, it's really not important for those doctors to know what goes into my body on a daily basis. Because it won't affect my treatment at all. Thank heavens I was all "ethical" and didn't "alter" anything.

I'm really pissed off about this. I mean, forgetting the fact that my record contains exactly this: the medications I've entered and two test results (a rapid strep and a Flu A aspirate) from when I went to employee health with the flu last year. Oh, and now, it probably shows a pending appointment with a family doc next week (FINALLY I'm going to go get all of this exhaustion and falling down checked out). It has my address wrong. It doesn't have my insurance information. And until said employee health flu visit, it had my name spelled wrong. Forgetting that there's NOTHING THERE, it's my information. It can't tell me anything I don't already know!

So, one of the things I did tonight was fill out a release of information form - to release my own information to myself. For the love of Steve....

Disciplinary action, my fat white ass.

Again I say...anyway.

So, now, I'm hanging out. I finished some paperwork, I disinfected my desk (Ruthie seems to have the plague). I did some laps around the psych department. I read my newly-arrived copy of Franklin Habit's cute new book of knitting cartoons, "It Itches." (SO cute. So Franklin. I love it.) I'd pre-ordered it months ago, so I was excited when I found it on my stoop this evening when I left for work. Last night I watched House and 30 Rock and Doogie Howser reruns on Hulu.

I keep trying to read more important things (like my readings for class tonight), but damn if I can concentrate on anything like that. I concede that I slept well today and thus tonight hate night float a little less, but, considering it's taken me over two hours to write this blog (I keep wandering off to do other very random things and then suddenly thinking, oh! Was I done with my blog?), I don't know that I'm up for great feats of concentration...

Yeah, don't think I'm going to class tonight.

Oh, in related news, I had my last interview for the psychoanalytic society this morning. It was much more pleasant than the one with the intrusive old guy who lived in the country. And I'm relieved that it's all wrapped up and done with.

Alright, I think I'm going to go knit. If anyone's still reading at this point...wow, you're awfully tolerant...

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Up all night, sleep all day

(If you missed the reference, click here.)

So I'm at work. And there's about a half dozen other things I could be doing in this moment of down time to make the ensuing hours easier, but, I'm blogging instead.

I'm on night float again. Which means I work from 9:30pm to 8:30 am from Sunday night until Friday morning. I relieve the intern, so, I basically get to be the intern on call. Which is better than actually being the intern on call at this hour, because I haven't spent all day getting worked up and hammered by the ER and the crisis pager.

I'm a fan of night float, because I think it's easier on the system as a whole, but I'm not particularly a fan of doing night float, because it's not especially easy on MY system. I am not one of those chosen few who can reverse their circadian rhythms at will. I? Have enough trouble maintaining a circadian cycle under the best of circumstances. But, we all have to do our part.

I've been here an hour and a half, and thusfar mostly what I've done is answer the phone. I tried to convince a man who claimed to be "confused" that he should stop drinking and get a clinic appointment in the morning, and argued with an outside ER doc (who sounded for the life of me like he was tweaking...or at least manic...) that I cannot accept a patient for transfer with a critical lab value, no matter how pleasant she is.

Even if you don't let me respond, the answer is still going to be no.

And now there's a patient to see in the ER. Guess I'll go do my job....
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