Trauma call

I started my one month rotation with the trauma surgery team yesterday.

I'm a little worried about how exciting that sounds to me, since going into surgery ...and then trauma surgery... would mean committing myself to the longest and most difficult post-medical school path out there. Five years of infamous general surgery residency and then another 2 of trauma fellowship. I think I would be about 80 when I would be done with school and ready to have a life outside of medicine...and then even that life would be limited.

Ok. Freak-out taken care of. Now on with my day...

So I began yesterday at 5am, met my team, followed them on rounds to see our 26 patients in 90 minutes (you do the math), spent 4 hours in surgery class learning about wound care, abdominal endocrine tumors, and something else I don't remember, and then spent the afternoon helping my intern out with her "scut work" (taking out catheters and tubes, chasing down radiology readings -more on this later, checking lab resuts, and admitting new patients in the ER). By 4 pm (just 11 hours after I crawled out bed!), my intern told me to go home, which I did -- but only for 2 hours, since I was to take "call" with my team that night.

After a quick run to safeway to stock up on caffeinated beverages (see previous entry), I was back in the ER at 7pm. Our first trauma, about 2 minutes after I walked in, was a 2 year old and her mom from a 75 mph car accident. Mom had a high blood alcohol level, which made the whole situation extra unpleasant, but fortunately, the little girl, still strapped to her life-saving car seat, was completely unharmed. In the early night, we had quite a few traumas, most of them serious motorcycle accidents. In our spare time, my resident invited me to scrub in on a quick laproscopic appendectomy, and even had the patience to teach me to suture a bit. At 1am sharp, when the cafeteria openned, we made the food run for curly fries and caffeine, getting ready for the "2am rush" when the bars began to close. By 2, we had two "911" calls at the same time, both gun-shot victims, both young males, but from separate incidents. One of them had been shot near the liver, so we took him to the OR to explore his abdomen for damage.

And then it got quiet... My feet began to feel like lead, and everytime I sat down, my eyes would start to roll to the back of my head. I impressed my intern by asking for scut work repeatedly, but I was just fighting desperately to stay awake. I hadn't been sleeping more than 4 or 5 hours every night for a month, and no matter how much caffeine I inhaled, I just didn't have the reserve for staying awake during the quiet late hour of a 24 hour call. At 5am, I gave out all pretense and fled to a call room for a 15 minute nap. It helped a little, but not much. I tried not to wish for someone to get shot/stabbed/hit by a car just so that I could have something to do. Nothing happened. Fortunately, by 6:45, we were again on our 25+ patient rounds, circling the hospital as the sun rose around us. I got home at 10am and crashed into bed.