Night shift

Night shift is a strange beast. Occasionally you meet someone who permanently does night shift. Or someone who enjoys night shift. Those people are weird. You might find such people wearing crocs and hemp pants, or saying things like “literally” when they actually mean the complete opposite. Those of us who are normal see nights as a chore; something to be dealt with, survived. They do not inspire a whole lot of joy.

Which is why I’ve been somewhat of a hermit for the last 6 weeks. For 6 weeks I’ve been nocturnal. Before “Twilight” I wouldn’t have been averse to being compared to a vampire. Now I mind. I mind very much. Thanks very much stupid Mormon author woman whose name I refuse to learn. You tomes of drivel should exclude you from being a household name.

But I digress. I was talking about night shift. Night shift is difficult. There are a lot of great things about being the night med reg. And by a lot I mean two. The first one is that you get 3 or 4 days off a week (You work 12 hour shifts so you only work a 7 day fortnight). This is great, though in general you need a least one and sometimes two of those days to recover. The second thing that is good about being the night med reg is that, for 12 hours a night, you’re kind of the boss. You’re not really the boss of course; the consultant is always just a phone call away. But practically, it’s sink or swim. You have to make all the decisions for the patients that come your way. There’s no back up. No support. People call you for advice or to help sort out their sick patients. You have to run the MET calls (cardiac arrests etc). It’s sink or swim, and when you swim it’s a pretty exciting feeling.

However, there are some not-so-great things about nights. It wreaks havoc with your body clock. You experience a tiredness you’ve never quite felt before. Quality sleep is so important and so hard to come by and so hard to get. Everything in your life gets put on hold in favor of work and sleep. Then, you have to make all the difficult aforementioned decisions when your brain really isn’t sharp. It’s hard on your relationships, on your fitness, on your emotions.

So, on Friday I finished my 6 weeks. I was so happy. The day I finished, I tried to stay up all day to try and reset my body clock. Foolishly I went out to dinner for the birthday of one of Shu-en’s friends. It was great for the first hour, but once it hit 9pm I crashed. Big time. I’d been awake for 26 hours. I had a massive sleep debt. And my debt was being called in. So I wasn’t very good company for the last hour of the dinner. I was all the fun of a healthy dose of shingles. But then I came home and slept for 12 hours and now I feel fantastic.

Then, on Saturday Shu-en and I went for massages. We were given a voucher for said massages as an engagement present. It was a good present. We didn’t have the choice of massage, so we had 45 minutes of a hot-stone massage and 45 minutes of what I’m going to call a Masculine Massage Of the Face with Various Oils and Creams, also known as a MMOFVOC. This is not to be confused with the feminine version of this, the Facial. A MMOFVOC is a very acceptable and masculine form of facial massage and is not at all girly. But before any of you accuse me of making my final descent into metrosexuality, seriously, feel my face. Just feel it. Then judge me.

Anyway, the hot stone massage was by far the best part of the experience. Basically they massage you with a hot stone. It’s not exactly ground-breaking but it is a very pleasant experience. The hot stone really relaxes tight muscles from 6 weeks straight of nights.

So now I have 4 short days until I’m off to Perth for a mates wedding, and then off to Vancouver for another mates wedding. Very exciting stuff! Can’t wait. I’ll blog when I get back to update everyone. Bye for now.

 

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