Agraphia Medical Tragicomedy

13Jul/093

The Dark Seedy Underbelly of Shift Work

It is 5:45 AM as I write this, the harsh glare of my laptop an unwelcome affront to my otherwise dark room.

I need to be at the ambulance depot in about 3 hours - tomorrow (today?) is my medic shift, where I ride along with the paramedics for 12 hours of sirens and speeding. Unfortunately, I've just finished a string of night shifts and my biological clock is set firmly to wake by night, sleep by day. I napped for an hour at midnight, but that's it.

I've touched on this in other posts. I really don't like the idea of pharmacologic sleep, but I suspect that tonight I should have popped a couple Benadryl. I just hate that I may end up doing that for the rest of my life.

Filed under: Medicine Leave a comment
Comments (3) Trackbacks (0)
  1. Pre Med Journey
    July 13th, 2009 - 15:33

    That sounds rough. I’ve tried Melatonin with some success. It doesn’t knock me out, but it does make me sleepy.

    ( REPLY )
  2. Qex
    July 17th, 2009 - 03:50

    What always works for me is playing something boring, like solitaire, on my laptop, in bed with the lights out. It takes maybe 30 mins before I can’t keep my eyes open.

    ( REPLY )
  3. Old MD Girl
    August 8th, 2009 - 08:02

    You’ve just hit on why Emergency Medicine is a tough field to go into. I love being on night shift now…. but I wonder if I would still love it at age 50.

    ( REPLY )

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