I Heart Caffeine

This will be short and sweet as my internet is out at home so i'm sitting in a Starbucks. Seriously I can only take the grinding of the grinder for so long before I want to scream. Being here reminds me of the wonders of caffeine. By some miracle, I made it through medical school and residency without drinking coffee. Not that I didn't want to. Everyone gets so excited about coffee and its various permutations. And its almost always free isn't it? It's not hard to find the ubiquitous 'coffee cart' whenever you're forced to wait somewhere. Smiles are spread and spirits are lifted at the mere mention of coffee. I simply don't like the taste and the fact that it leaves me with dirty mouth. So, i'm left with iced tea and diet Coke.

Most of the time I enjoy caffeine as a byproduct of whatever i'm drinking. However, when i'm at work I use it like the drug that it is. America's most popular drug. As I said before I work nights and weekends. During the week, my shifts are around 15 hours long and on the weekend I work 24-25 hours. Over the past year, I have tried to figure out a way to feel alert and chipper and by all means competent once 3am rolls around. I've tried to stay up really late the night before a shift in order to sleep in the day of my shift but I am a die hard morning person and ended up feeling sad and unproductive sleeping all day. I tried getting up early on the day of my shift and taking a nap later but inevitably by forcing myself to try to nap my body rebelled and I just ended being really tired by midnight. Now I just wake at my regular time and go about my day until it is time to go in and know that I will be exhausted at the witching hour. Everytime I feel that bandlike tension around my forehead, the sandpaper feel of my bloodshot eyeballs, the nauseating hunger rolling around my stomach, the inability to multitask effectively, the quick irritation at questions (and then the guilt for being short with the staff) and the long pauses in my speech (much like absence seizures) when I'm having word-finding difficulty during signout I wonder....am I sacrificing my own health for the sake of my patients? When my heart is doing somersaults in my chest from caffeine overload and i've eaten more vending machine crap than I ever would during daylight hours in order to fuel my beaten brain I promise myself that as soon as I get some sleep I will work out and drink water and eat healthfully. Until my next shift.  

Check out this link to learn more about sleep deprivation and patient safety. http://www.aap.org/saferhealthcare/webinar_06.html