Going to bed at 10 am.

I'm post-call again this morning, for the second time in four days. Since I'm going on vacation during the second half of the month, they have to cram in my requisite number of calls (five this month) into the rest of the time that I am here. We had a busy morning, including an emergent intubation in the ICU (which I got, yay!), so I was at work for 26 hours! (I love to complain about how many hours I work, can't you tell?) We all have our idiosyncrasies; one of the female senior residents loves comparing her looks to other girls. She's in her late thirties but looks younger. She is half Asian but dyes her hair platinum blond religiously. This morning she saw me and grabbed my shirt. "OH MY GOD, Sel, you look SOOOOOO EXHAUSTED." You might think she was concerned that I had a rough night on call or was being too overworked, but no, you could see it in her face: she looked happy, perhaps even thrilled that I looked so horrible. We had a morning conference with the chairman after that and I kept catching her catching sneak peeks at me. (Thinking to myself: Okay already, I know I look horrible; is it that shocking?)

I had a busy but satisfying call. One of my patients was only 16 years old and recently immigrated from Central America so she didn't speak a word of English. I was able to use my Spanish but more importantly, I was able to play a huge role as she was scared to tears about the upcoming operation. I was more connected to her than the surgical team was, which confirmed my understanding that an anesthesiologist does have power to impact patient's lives... no matter how our role is belittled by other physicians (especially surgeons).

The only unfortunate thing about being on call last night was that I missed Chris's birthday. He complained about it a lot, but more like a little child whining rather than really angry (I hope). I probably should have made more of an effort to switch my schedule (ie, trade call nights with someone else), and for that I feel guilty. I did, however, take him out to dinner the night before since I knew I wouldn't be there yesterday. That was nice. On the whole, however, something seems off about him ever since yesterday morning. When we talked on the phone he seemed distant and upset about something. He keeps denying that anything's wrong, but my intuition is usually right. I'm guessing that it's something that he doesn't want to admit to me, so maybe it involves money.