There is no sleep so sweet as post-call sleep. You drag yourself through rounds all morning, waiting for the senior resident or attending to look your way and say, "You're post-call? You can go home now." And then you go home, shower for much longer than you should because you feel so dirty with hospital, and crawl into bed.
And the sleep is so warm, so uninterrupted. Sure, I usually get to sleep a few hours in the on-call room, but this is so much better. No pagers waiting to go off. No sounds of the hospital's tubing system coming through the walls, sounding like a surprised inhalation. Just sweet, perfect sleep.
It almost makes being on call worth it.
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3 comments:
It makes me want to go to bed right now.
There is definitely something about the sleep you get when you are exhausted from productive work or play. Especially when others respect your right to being comatose.
Hey, Karen - it's Meredith. About call in general, on a tragicomic note - every time I'm in a meeting with a doc or nurse or program coordinator and her/his pager goes off, a little voice in the back of my brain screams, "MOM, DON'T GO!!!"
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