Labor and Delivery

I'm at the end of my second week of four of these overnight shifts. It's 5:00 in the morning, and I don't get to go home for another 3 hours. I've seen a lot of things, some very happy, some very, very sad, and a lot in between. I wanted to write about the very, very sad things, but my brain doesn't function properly anymore -- that's due to the whole overnight thing. It's easier to be sad for 5 minutes, process it as quickly as I can, and move on to the next thing. Frankly, I just don't have the energy to spend any more brain power on it, and that in itself does make me sad. Maybe once it's all said and done, I can find the energy to process it correctly and come up with emotions that will allow me to tell you about it.

My day starts at 5:30 pm and ends at 8 am, and that leaves me just enough time in between to sleep like a rock for just long enough to function for the next 5:30p-8a shift.

Every night I eat breakfast/dinner somewhere between 9-11pm, and it's usually a cheeseburger and fries. Or a turkey cheeseburger and fries. There are no vegetables at the late-night grill other than the lettuce and tomato that goes on my burger. Fries don't count. I'm craving broccoli hardcore. Sometime in the middle of the night, I inevitably eat a snack, like chips -- tonight it was an oreo-and-vanilla frozen yogurt blendy dessert thing, which was delicious. Most mornings, I run back down to the early-morning grill and get breakfast -- bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. Yesterday I caved and got a Krispy Kreme donut IN ADDITION TO the sandwich. I ate all my groceries at home last week, and didn't go grocery shopping last weekend, and I'm paying for it this week, for sure. There's no way my wedding dress is going to fit when it arrives in 8-10 weeks. Oh well.

I'm so behind in everything involving the rest of my life, it isn't even funny. In residency, I'll do this for 8 weeks in a row. Can it really be too late for my backup plan of a career in public health? Or my backup backup plan of becoming a florist? If only I didn't have $300,000 of student loans to pay back.

Speaking of loans, I found out there's a Residency and Relocation loan I can apply for -- up to $15,000 to be used toward the cost of applying to, interviewing for, and relocating for my residency. I think I'm going to need it -- as of today I've gotten 12 (12!) interview invitations (of 31 applications), and almost none of them can be scheduled back to back. So that means I'm booking plane tickets back east once a week for most of October, November, and December, at a cost of at least $200 a trip. Yikes! Plus hotels, rental cars, you name it. It was exciting at first, but now it's just stressful. And I found out that one of the biggest lenders for these relocation loans is going to quit lending in a couple weeks, due to the credit crisis. Two weeks ago, I blew off the credit crisis as being serious for the country and for other people, but not for me in particular, since I have no assets whatsoever. Today, I see how it is going to affect me. Blah. So I guess I'd better sign up for an additional $15K of debt while I still can. The "perk" is that since I'm going to be a doctor, I can get special doctor rates for things like this relocation loan, and for mortgages. A better perk would be if I could crawl into bed at a normal time and sleep for a normal number of hours. Why do I have to like Ob/Gyn so much? I could be a dermatologist. Or an ophthomologist. Or an anesthesiologist. Except rashes give me the heebie-jeebies, I think eyeballs are the most disgusting part of the human body, and the thought of having to suction phlegm out of someone's throat makes me gag. So vaginas and a horrible lifestyle it is. Sigh.

So far, I've accepted all the interview invitations that have been extended to me, even though most of them are for smaller programs, because I feel like I need to. I may not hear from the bigger programs, so I need to take what I can get. I still want to interview at as many places as possible, because I still don't believe my chances can be very good (mostly, that's just me being cautious. But it's possible!). But the scheduling is starting to get to me. A lot of places interview on the same days, so I'm having trouble fitting them all in. Plus, I have to take time off from school to interview, and officially, there is a limit to how many days I'm allowed to be gone. So if one school in Pennsylvania interviews on a Wednesday, and another interviews on that Friday, my grades can't afford for me to take Tuesday (to get there the night before) - Friday off, but my wallet can't afford for me to fly out Tuesday night, fly back Wednesday night, and fly out again Thursay night to interview Friday. What to do?

I don't know what the answer is. All I know is, it's the weekend, and I'm going to sleep as much as possible, which may not be much, because:

Did I mention that Eric's here? And that we're going to see Ben Folds this weekend? And having our tasting with the caterer? And going to a wine tasting with some friends?

It's going to be glorious. Sleep be damned.