Night owl

It’s midnight. It’s my day off. Time seems to slow right about now (even with the daylights savings time messing with me). I have so many things to accomplish and yet all of them feel like awkward or miserable things to do right now. Who wants to clean the floors or do the dishes in the wee hours of the morning?

I think that a disproportionate number of my posts are about my night shifts, and I’m so sorry for that. I think it’s an unfair representation of my time, but it’s so hard not to focus on it because so much of my time is spent alone, in a very quiet house where I feel pretty much guilty about doing anything but sitting on a computer (which is one of the last things I actually WANT to be doing). because it's the only quiet activity. I take solace in the fact that at the very least I get to catch the sunset each night on my way to work, so that's a plus. It's like the sunrise in reverse:

So far this month Tom and I have only seen each other for more than 5-10 minutes a total of two times. I leave for work at 5:20 PM, he arrives home at 7-7:30 PM. I get home from work around 8 AM after he’s long gone for another work day. One day he raced home on the train for the day I get to go in “late” to work around 6 pm and he was able to sneak in the door in time for us to say hello.

I had planned to come up with this elaborate game of sticky notes of communication to say hi. But you know what? When I get home at 8 am, all I want to do is eat a meal (which inevitably ends up being a bowl of cereal) and climb into bed. I’ve been told by another resident to not be so hard on myself about getting nothing done in my off time—“when you’re on nights your job is to come to work, stay for 16 hours and then go home and sleep, you don’t need to do anything else. Nights is the one time that you have the excuse, and the right, to do nothing but work and sleep.” It's a good thing I have such great friends in the residency to pull me through when I feel like I can't do it. Like when Chi-Fong left me this incredible surprise - a chai tea and an apple-pie pastry. Does she know me or what?

Or when I found this in someone's chart the other night after they were admitted in labor. The doc decided to write down their chief complaint (the reason they came to the hospital) as a direct quote of a laboring woman. You can't make this stuff up folks:

The other night we "won the game" which means that we cleared all the patients out of the emergency room and had some time to take a breath. I texted Tom this photo to say that I was able to get in a few "steps" on the elliptical before rounding on patients at 5AM and it never felt so good!

Saturday night is our date night, where Tom forces himself to make it until midnight so we can have a few hours together. Last week, we went out to dinner and then at an impromptu decision got ourselves some hot tea and then went to a movie. You have no idea how good it was to see each other!

We even learned how to make naan and had some amazing home cooked curry:

Tonight we joined some of my co-interns for movie night and I got to snuggle baby Ali again. It's amazing how no matter how many times I deliver a baby in one night, I never get enough baby time! :) Ali is growing up so fast and it does make me realize that residency, in so many ways, will be over before I know it and yet it will still fulfill the saying that I thougth was so appropriate for medical school: "the longest shortest 4 years of your life."

The longest part seems to come right about now, on a Saturday night when it’s me and my laptop, trying to catch up on life and feeling less and less motivated to do it as the night goes on.

 Working nights gets to the best of us, as exhibited well by my chief resident who had reached her wits end around 430 am:

 So far Tom is really enjoying his time at FINRA. He'll be on the road for training in March in NYC and again in April (in Dallas Texas no less). He's settling in and definitely is a natural at what he is doing. I'm so incredibly proud of him and his success at a new job and his willingness to commute 1.5 hours each way to do it!

I guess it's time for me to get back to work. I'm trying to study for the next step of my boards that I take on April 7th/8th, read up on all the things I don't know about obstetrics (which is still a lot despite how much I've learned in 8 months), and switch around my insurance plan now that Tom has better options at his own job.

Too bad there's not a single business open at 12:30 AM huh? (well, there is, but Tom has already warned me of the dangers of getting on Amazon in the middle of the night)

Sending love to you all. Missing everyone so much but excited for my upcoming week of vacation where I get to venture back to Montana for the first time in what feels like YEARS!