I'm tired. I was on call yesterday and had a busy night. My hospital OR has turned into an elective procedure OR 24 hours a day. We're also supposed to be a level 1 trauma center, but it's kind of hard to fulfill that responsibility when all the staff is too busy doing elective cases. It kind of makes me mad and I've been a little vocal about it. Elective cases are for Monday through Friday during the day. Period. Nighttime is for sleeping and traumas.

Last night was really busy for me. In July, I made up my mind to make sure I worked harder than everybody else. I volunteer for the cases, if someone else is up all night, I'm up with them. I just don't want to be known as a slacker. No need to worry. The other resident in my class that I worked with came in hungover and made it clear all he wanted to do was sit on his ass all day, so I spent all morning in a long spinal fusion case, while he volunteered for easy cases. Then I had a trauma come in. A drunk guy who was "just minding his own business" when someone slashed his throat. Pretty weird. His thyroid gland was hanging out of his neck. The big trauma came at 10pm. A lady came in with 3 broken bones in her legs. When she got to the holding area, she was really hurting, crying, and scared. I felt so bad for her, I gave her a big slug of fentanyl (I usually don't do that until they actually get to the OR). Considering her injury, I didn't think it would touch her pain, but she told me I gave her better pain relief than she'd been given all night in the ER. She was really scared and asked me not to leave her during the surgery. I just wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be okay. Her surgery went on all night. The hungover resident told me would we "tag team" her case with me, but he went to bed and left me high and dry. It was the upper level resident who got up in the middle of the night to relieve me, but I stayed until the case was over. I hate to not finish what I started. Upper level resident commented to me about how hard I work. : )

This resident is actually really nice. My call room linens hadn't been changed, and he went to the linen storage and helped me change my bedsheets. I was blown away by the kindness of that at 5am when I know he was really tired. Hungover Resident would not have done that.

On call again tomorrow. God, will this ever end? Can I physically do this for 3 more years?