December Intern Year:
Every once in a while, when the effects of cumulative sleep deprivation start to rear their ugly head, I might give people cause to wonder if I am one burger short of a happy meal. I'm so sure that I'm not (ha ha ha), that I'm willing to share three of said experiences from the last month:
1) I got off from work today at noon, post-call, and was asleep in bed by 1:30 pm. And oh what a very deep sleep it was. I had set my alarm for around 7:00 so that I could wake up to meet my uncle for dinner, but at around 6:40, the following scenario took place.
"Brrrring!! Brrrring!"
Alarm? Phone? Hmmm...not sure....very, very sleepy.
"Brriiiing!! Brrring!" I brush the covers off my head and look through the darkness at my nightstand. Phone. Definitely, Phone. I make a few fumbles to grasp at it, while trying to get a few facts straight, "What day is it? Is it a weekend? Do I have to get up and go to work?" I see that it's my sister-in-law, Caitlin, who it's always a pleasure to hear from. "Not a weekend," I decide, "but morning...I think I have to go to work. Which means that it's around 6:30 am here...making it around 4:30 am in Utah...shoot! Something must be wrong or she wouldn't be calling at 4:30!!"
I answer the phone.
"Hello? Caitlin?" "Hi, OCM, how are you?" "Good, is everything okay?" "Yeah, fine, why, what are you doing?" "Sleeping, but, uh, it's so early there." All of a sudden I realize that if it's 6:30 am my time, then I have monumentally overslept, and I sit up with a start. "Oh my gosh," I gasp, "I'm late for work!" "What? You have to go to the hospital?" Now she's starting to sound worried. Finally the light of understanding starts to dawn, and I think that she sounds oddly unlike someone who is making a call at 4:30 am. My brain gels together enough for me to ask, "What day is it?" "Monday." Then I notice two helpful little letters next to the 6:30 on my clock: P.M.
So now that we have that straight.
Wow...strong performance, OCM. :)
2) I was taking care of a very adorable, and very sick little boy last week who I'll call Will. Will, 2 years old and cute as a button, came in with meningitis and significant mental confusion. He was very lethargic and had a tendency to stare into space for long periods of time. A little freaky. Because I hated to wake him when he was sleeping, but needed to regularly assess his mental status, I asked mom to have the nurse page me the next time Will was awake. One afternoon I got a page that he was awake, so I headed over to the room. When I walked in, I was shocked to see Will out of bed, and kneeling by a chair at his bedside, playing with a little hand-held video game! Wow...he looked like he'd made a complete turnaround. I knelt down next to him and said, "Hey there buddy...how's it going?" "Good!" We chatted for a few minutes, and the whole time I'm thinking how he seemed like a new kid. After I was satisfied that he was looking about ten million times better, I stood up and turned to his parents. "Is he still having staring spells? He looks so much better!" Mom looked back at me with a very confused stare. "Actually," she said haltingly, still looking at me like I'd grown another head, "It's Will that I'm worried about...not Nathan."
My head whipped around to the bed, and there tucked underneath the covers, and nearly swallowed up by the big bed (I swear !), was Will, looking identical to, but much sicker than, his 4 year old brother Nathan (I swear !) who I had just thoroughly examined.
Ha ha ha...try explaining that one. "Apparently I can't quite differentiate your children from one another, but I swear we're taking good care of you." Actually, the parents were really nice about it, and I think I played it off fairly well. After all, those boys could practically pass as twins (I swear !)
3)About a month ago, Rockstar and I were planning on going to see the new Bond movie after work one day with Nancy and Robert. Nancy had mentioned that maybe she could pick up discount movie tickets from Costco, when I remembered that I'd heard that the hospital sells them as well. I figured that would be easier than her trying to make it to Costco in time, so I made a quick U-turn and headed back to the hospital.
As I walked in the doors, all I could remember was that I'd been told the tickets were sold in the Office of Decedent affairs. Apparently, so I'd been told, they offer all kinds of random services there, like detailing of your care and laundry. Who knew? I knew I'd seen the signs for the office over by the student call rooms and the Morgue, so I headed down to the basement and found my way there. I knocked on the door and heard a tiny voice call out, "Come in!'
I opened the door and saw a small, brown-haired woman sitting behind a non-descript desk, with nary but one or two filing cabinets filling up the mostly empty room. 'What an odd place to be selling movie tickets and doing laundry,' I thought.
"Can I help you?"
"Uh, yeah...I heard that you sold discount movie tickets here?"
She looked taken aback. "Movie tickets?? Here? "
All of a sudden it did seem rather ridiculous for a hospital to be selling movie tickets, and I felt a little bashful. "Uh, yeah...I thought I was told that."
"Honey, I think you are in the wrong office." I was actually a little relieved, then, because her comment seemed to indicate that in fact the hospital did sell them, but I had just wound up in the wrong office. "I think you are looking for Campus Corner," she continued, "which is downstairs. It can be a little hard to find, so why don't I walk you there."
"Great," I replied, relaxing a little.
She led me out of the office and we made small talk as we headed towards the elevator.
"Do you work here?" she asked me.
"Yeah, I'm one of the residents," I admitted, a little embarrassed that despite working there 80+ hours a week, I couldn't find my way to the movie ticket office.
We chatted a bit more and then the elevator arrived.
"By the way," I asked before she walked away, "What do you do in the office of Decedent Affairs?"
"Oh, we take care of all the dead bodies. We take them from the morgue and place them in the various funeral homes around the area. This is a pretty busy season for us."
My smile froze in place the way it does when you realize that you can't hide from the 'idiot' sign flashing away on your forehead.
"Thanks again!" I choked. She smiled a knowing smile, and turned to walk away.
Later, I turned to Webster's to see how a little etymology could have prevented the whole affair.
decedent |diˈsēdnt| noun Law a person who has died : to make sure the decedent's property passes to his children. ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin decedent- ‘dying,’ from the verb decedere (see decease ).
Like I said, a few burgers short of a happy meal. But only on occassion. ;)
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