Friday Update (Bits and In Pieces)

It's Friday and we all know what that means! It means the end of a slammed, exhausted week!

Monday: Cramming for exams! Tuesday and Wednesday: Exams! (I got an A on one and a B on the other, which I am perfectly okay with.) Thursday and Friday: Clinicals!

This week's patient: A dying man who probably doesn't have the mental capacity to understand that he's dying. Where that falls on the heartbreak scale, I don't know. What do you think? (He's eleven years older than I am. Does that change the equation?) Why he's dying is not a mystery. He's been working on it steadily for years, probably decades.

A short list of things I cling to on clinical days: Cold showers and the AC in the car to wake me up. The promise of a day spent on my feet with no time to slow down and think about how tired I am. The hospital parking lot's glorious view of the pre-dawn mountains, quietly dignified above the lights of the city. After dawn, there are hot air balloons--always some degree of magical--visible from the patient's big windows. I hope they help.

I'm not getting enough sleep, as always. I have to be up at 4:00 a.m. on Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday night, I got two hours of sleep, then a long stretch of no sleep, then two very broken--nearly smashed to bits--hours of sleep before my alarm went off.

I'm getting used to starting the day exhausted and working through the day exhausted.

Thursday, my clinical instructor was sick. A patient with pneumonia coughed repeatedly in my face as I leaned over him to examine him. I scraped my arm on something. Bacteria everywhere. Viruses everywhere. My hypochondria goes into overdrive and I scrubbed my hands clean and wiped down my stethoscope and watch with antibacterial wipes.

I'm so tired.

For dinner on Thursday, Dave and I went to the co-op (I'm out of coffee and yogurt for my lunches) and picked up something from the deli. We sat at the tables near the registers and Dave ate his sandwich and I ate what The Brain picked out: avocado sushi and mustard potato salad. We shared a bottle of water. I haven't cooked in awhile, unless you count a pre-clinical breakfast of microwaved scrambled eggs on a tortilla. Is that cooking? I don't even know anymore.

Thursday night: Melatonin! Three drops in a cup of water and about six hours of sleep, almost unbroken, not nearly as broken as the night before. A miracle.

Friday morning: My eyes are red and achy, not from lack of sleep but maybe because I'm getting sick. (Drops make them feel better for a very short time.) I take care of a dying man who doesn't understand he's dying. Part of my weekend will be devoted to writing about this man in such a way that he can't be identified by what I write. Like this. I'm practicing right now. But even if you knew his name, it wouldn't matter to you. It barely matters to anyone else, except his very elderly mother who calls him daily, several times a day. She also doesn't know he's dying.

I make sure his phone is always by his side.

Every morning I cross the river and wish it--and the cottonwood trees that grow along its banks--a good morning. (It's before dawn and the river and trees return almost immediately to slumber.) On my way home, I say goodbye to them, tell them I'll see them in the morning. On Friday afternoon, I tell them I'll see them next week. I tell them to have a good week.