A Day in the Life - Part I

AZ -

I’m on no sleep, no sleep.
You look a little stressed.
Oh, I’m stressed.

I’m kinda of copying EKG with this post. I was gonna totally rip him off and do everything by the time it happened, just like he had done with last Friday’s blog, “I’m So Tired.” However, the past 26 hour call I did was way too crazy and when I thought about writing everything down that happened from Friday at 5.25 am to 9.00 am on Saturday would bore the sh*t out of everyone. This is just a quick a dirty version of my first call… that is still really long.

I woke up on Friday at 5.25 am and was on the OB floor by 5.50 am. “It’s gonna be a busy day and night Drew,” one of the residents said as I began to round that morning. (They call me Drew because there is another Andy on the rotation that started before me, and some of the nurses call me Doctor Drew, but I don’t yell at them.)

There were six labor inductions for the day. I rounded on two patients from 6.00-6.40 am and then went to get some breakfast before sign-out and 7.30 am lecture. Lecture only lasted until 8.15 am and after that the day truly began.

I helped with three of the new admits and did the history and physical on two of them. An H/P takes a good OB resident about a half-an-hour; it takes me about an hour, fifteen minutes of which are spent looking for the damn vitals chart that the nurses leave wherever they please. (I always put them away because I’m such a gentleman.)

At 10.00 am I was finishing the second H/P when a nurse told me room eight was ready to deliver and I should introduce myself so I could help with the delivery. I walked into the room and the Senior Chief Resident and Attending followed me.

This is what I heard as I walked in: “There’s mec.” “She’s not progressing.” “BP dropping.” “Fetal heart tones dropping.” “We gotta go, get the OR ready for crash C-section.”

I wasn’t gonna help with this delivery. “What do you want me to do?” I asked the Chief Resident. “Help the nurses, scrub in, but don’t get too close to the table.”

I did exactly what he said, but it didn’t stop me from getting yelled at for not getting him a scalpel fast enough and then having it touch my gloves, which technically weren’t sterile since I wasn’t gowned.

The woman was in the OR by 10.07 and delivered her baby at 10.24 am. Both mom and baby were stable when I left today.

The resident thanked me for my help and sort of apologized for yelling at me, “You were doing great helping out. Thanks. Just remember the sterile field.” I was trying. It was just crazy in there.