Showing posts with label on call. Show all posts
Showing posts with label on call. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Overnight call: the good, the bad, & the ugly

Dr. D is currently on a rotation that has him working mostly nights this month. It has been, in a word, challenging. I'd like to share the good, the bad, and the ugly with you all from our experiences, but being the eternal optimist that I am, I'm going to save the good for last and end on a high note.


The sleep schedule.  

We are both pretty exhausted. D is living the life of a vampire. As much as the middle school version of me wished she could be dating Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it is not as sexy or as awesome as I thought it would be. I still have to function in the land of the living, so our paths cross for a couple hours in the morning (as in, we sleep next to each other during that time) and then again for a few hours before D goes back in to work. And Jdog is getting twice the sleep he usually does (at night with me, and then he naps again with D when he comes home), so he's like a groggy dog zombie pretty much all the time. It's zombies and vampires up in this joint, and it ain't pretty.



No, seriously. The sleep schedule blows.


Post-call days! 

If I were only allowed to give one piece of advice to couples who are new to overnight call schedules, it would be this: make the most of your post-call days. Date each other. Go on adventures. Explore what is likely to be a new city for you both. Fight that urge to stay in bed all day... you won't regret it, I promise. All I know for certain is that it's how we are staying sane this month.

Care to share any of your good/bad/uglies about residency (or any other life transition, for that matter)?

Friday, October 29, 2010

Beep.

Yes, it's a Friday evening. And yes, I'm blogging. It's all thanks to that silly little device Dr. D has clipped to his hip.

Dr. D is on surgery call this weekend. When he first explained it to me---something along the lines of "yeah, I'll get called in if someone's appendix explodes"---I was like, okay... there aren't that many appendixes in this town that are ripe for the rupturin'. Right?

Unfortunately, there was at least one. We were all set to go get frozen yogurt for a mini Friday night date when his pager started to chirp at him, in far too chipper of a manner for a date-ruiner, if you ask me.

I know I should probably prepare myself to have a lot more Friday nights end up this way, but I'll allow myself to be indignant at least this once.

Pagers. Seriously. Who uses pagers any more?

For any of you 30 Rock fans out there, I'm reminded of the following exchange between Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy:
Liz- "Okay, very funny. You bought a pager from Dennis. Will you take it off now, please?"

Jack- "Oh, I can't. I'm expecting a call from 1983."