Dr. Millar, the 'Night Float'

With intern year down, D has started his first rotation as a true surgical resident working the 'Night Float'--dum, dum, dum. This means he is working six 12-hour shifts a week from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. He actually has adjusted quite nicely. However, I am struggling putting the kids to bed (his usual duty) because I can't come up with outrageous, rhyming tunes on the fly. It is strange--in a good way-- to have him walk into the house at 7:00 A.M. with a big grin on his face. Today I benefitted from this schedule because he "stopped by the grocery store on (his) way home" and picked up eggs, bacon ("I even got turkey bacon, it is 98% fat free"), and white bread for French Toast (items I generally stay away from-except eggs, we were just out of those). Breakfast was lovely, though I am always baffled by the dirty pans left in the sink for someone else to wash (hint, hint-- breakfast is a million times better when the dishes aren't left over).

D says he enjoys roaming the hospital at night. The halls are not bustling with visitors or administrators. Many of the calls he gets are 'important,' meaning someone's vitals are going down the tube, or they need a consult, or emergency surgery. Last week he got a frantic call from a friend in the SICU (surgical ICU) saying this guy was crashing and he needed to be "unzipped." What this meant is that D paged his attending, ran down to the unit, they poured iodine over his belly and cut the patient open from his sternum down-- his bowels were blocked, inflamed, and desperately needed room to breathe. This is the stuff that ER is made of.

On a sadder note, one of D's saddest/more embarrassing things happened during the night, too. He was juggling some consults when an elderly woman presented with a perforated bowel. She had undergone surgery in the previous week and rather than go under the knife again, her family (her grandson was a scrub nurse at the hospital) elected to to send her to CT or something to see if she was a candidate for some sort of laprascopic and less invasive procedure. About 30 minutes after they left he walked past their room which was slightly ajar and he was greeted by the family in a circle at the foot of Grandma's bed. D cheerfully burst, "So, what's the verdict?" To which the answer was the ENTIRE family turning around with tear-stained faces. The nurse D knew said, "She didn't make it." She had died during her CT scan-- so sad. D was mortified that he hadn't picked up on the sombre mood before he opened his mouth. I am sure he recovered quickly with words of remorse and understanding.

D also says people's true colors are revealed during the night. Want to know if an attending is REALLY cool? Wake him up at 2:00 A.M. about a consult. At this time of night people have not had sufficient time to put their masks on. He is surprised by the reactions some attendings give to performing their DUTIES. This makes me wonder how I would react if awoken in the night by a resident. Since I will never know, I can imagine being awoken in the night by a crying baby (or two). Hmmmm, that doesn't bode well for me. . . . .