I am so excited to feel like a real person again. I just finished 4 weeks of night float and it was a wonderful feeling to come home at 4 pm today. Night float meant I worked noon Sunday to 7 am Monday, and then 7 pm - 7 am Monday night through Thursday night. Overall night float is just a weird place to be for a number of reasons.....first, you sort of start to feel like you live in a cave, second it is hard to ever connect with anyone as you are sleeping or starting work when everyone else is free (played phone tag with multiple people for the whole month), third the job itself is weird-- your main goal is to keep patients alive until morning (hopefully we did a little more than simply keep them alive though) and answer nurse's pages about a variety of things - starting meds, talking to parents about this or that at midnight (why do parents decide they want to talk to the physician at midnight?!?!!), assessing a patient with fever, fast breathing or who just in general doesn't look too good. By the end of the 4 weeks my life consisted of working, sleeping, eating and then on my weekends off basically the same thing minus the working as despite getting adequate sleep during the week I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to do anything productive. But we put in our time on night float so we have 4 less months where we have overnight call in the hospital, which is definitely worth it. And the nights were slow enough that occasionally we passed our times with fondue parties and such. But I am glad it is done!
Now I am on hematology/oncology with somewhat normal day schedules. Back to some normalcy, although the other day (albeit it was night float) I walked into the hospital and felt like I was in a movie. The line for the ER registration desk was overflowing into the hallway and everywhere I looked I saw yellow masks. Patients running around with masks over their mouth and nose, parents, siblings, doctors...everywhere were face masks. No one needs to go panic, but the flu season is going to be bad this year! Flu precautions are already in full force at Children's, so anyone in the hospital with any inkling of flu symptoms has to wear a mask. Just several friendly doctor reminders.....get your flu shot!!!! and unless you have a severe underlying medical illness, do not go to the busy overcrowded ER if you think you have the flu, it is fine to go to your regular doctor! Our ER is currently maxed out with flu patients and although it may make for me feeling like I am in the movies, they have had to set up a completely separate area specifically for flu diagnosis for people who really don't need to be there at all.
9 comments:
Thanks for sharing about what you have been up to this last month. I always enjoy hearing about your experiences. So, question about flu shots...Do you get just the general flu shot AND the H1N1 shot when it comes out too? Or do people my age not need to get the
H1N1 flu shot? (Keeping in mind my exposure to kids) Any thoughts appreciated.
You definitely want the regular shot and the H1N1 depending on availability. Currently the recommendations for the H1N1 vaccine are just for kids 6 mo-24 years old, people around kids less than 6 months old, adults with health conditions and health care workers, and pregnant women....the recommendations may change if there is more vaccine available and may just be opened up to the general public and then because of your increased risk of exposure from kids and exposing kids as well you'd probably want to get it. www.cdc.gov has the most up to date information that will be changed as more info becomes available...but i'll let you know too if i hear anything.
as my mom would say, "flu shots are poison!" why dont you just deal with the flu in the slim chance that you would actually get it, rather than getting a small dose of it pumped into you every year? (ps i've never had the flu or a flu shot).
Wow, that is a pretty crazy lifestyle...good thing it is was a short time. I know, the bad flu season sounds a bit scary. I'll have to see what your answer to the "doons" person is below...that's always been my question too. I'm glad you are back in the land of the living again with your new rotation. Can't wait to hear what that brings for you. Take care!
yep, that makes sense. deal with it in the 'slim' chance that you get it since out of the people who get it each year (av. of up to 20% of total pop.), an average of 36,000 will die from it and over 200,000 will need to be hospitalized. Certain groups are more susceptible, and if you are around them, then you probably owe it to them to get the shot and are possibly causing harm by withholding it from them. If it actually was 'poison,' the discussion might be a bit different, but it isn't so no worries.
just sayin'.
Thanks Sara. I appreciate your input. Yea, if you hear any updates as well keep us infomed if you would please.
of course those at high risk should get the shot, as well as those working with high-risk folks. nobody disputes that. but how can you not say that 200K out of 305million is not a slim chance? (i'm also assuming that most of those 200k patients are in the high-risk categories--elderly, chillins, chronically ill, etc). but for me and you (aaron), the chances have to be close to zero. right?
and, yeah, its not poison. my mom also told me that the crust of bread is the healthiest part.
but dont take it from me--i'm the guy who said "we dont need to take malaria pills" (which actually ARE poison) and ended up getting malaria. twice.
but i still dont want to end up with guillian barre syndrome. and, flu shots only cover 3 strands of the flu out of dozens!
doons, i was just worried that you had turned vaccine crazy on us... :)
STILL, the chance wouldn't quite be zero. the 200K are the people who end up getting hospitalized (yes, likely high-risk kiddos), but there is a general 1 in 5 chance to get it - more than zero i would say. this year is shaping up to be worse than average already though.
you are just a crazy lucky kid i suppose, but it has been years since i have had it, too.
this is landon:
hey man, you cant just quote the high end of the cdc statistics. arent you a sociologistismist? if they say 5-20%, that's like me telling you that the chances are 1 in 20!
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