Day Two: Your Thoughts Matter

Let's talk about the concept of pre-suffering. I had never heard this term until one of my coworkers identified it as the way I was feeling. If pre-suffering was an Olympic sport, let's just say I would be successful beyond my wildest dreams. The way I understand it, pre-suffering is when you feel all the negative emotion and worry associated with an event well before the event has even happened. And there's no guarantee the event will ever happen. An example (I have many): Before starting a weekend of call at our community hospital I have trouble sleeping. All day Friday I am filled with a vague sense of melancholy. I find myself glancing at the clock, mentally counting down the hours until the admissions flood in and my pager calls out it's disgustingly cheerful jingle. I brood over how tired I'll be on Monday and wonder if I'll get any sleep at all at night. Want to know what makes matters even worse? I not only do this right before a call weekend but also whenever I look ahead at the schedule and visualize how many weekends of call I have coming up. I know, get over it right? Right.

I tend to look ahead and try to prepare myself for the worst possible outcome of everything just so I'm not caught off guard. The effect of this is that I spend an enormous amount of time and emotional energy worrying about things that might never happen. And even if they did happen, what did I change by worrying about them? So I might not get any sleep tonight on call and I will feel like crap. But, I don't feel like crap right now. In fact, it's a beautiful warm afternoon and I just took my dog on a long walk through the park. I have a comfortable house and am planning a delicious dinner of spaghetti with Italian sausage and whole wheat bread. I'm looking forward to going on a road trip with my dear husband next weekend and seeing old friends at a wedding. Aaaaannnnnd I have an appointment with a "life coach" next week. So we have that little bit of randomness to anticipate.

Do you see what I did? I redirected my thoughts away from my useless pre-suffering and focused on the here and now. I focused on the good parts of my life. The things that are actually happening. So simple yet so difficult to achieve on an hourly basis. Earl Nightingale, known as the "Dean of Personal Development", said "the mind moves in the direction of our currently dominant thoughts". Practice channeling your thoughts and see if this makes a difference in your attitude. Or in your life. Then you'll be on your way to a happier and more successful career and life on day two of the journey: Your Thoughts Matter.

I'm Ridiculous: Part 2

I just finished up a weekend of call and I'm exhausted. Yes, I slept in my own bed. No, I did not have any "middle of the night" admits. So why the heck am I so tired??!! If you read the first year of my blog you will understand how ridiculous this is. I spent 2 years working nights and weekends in the NICU and would've been overjoyed to have a job where I could sleep in my own bed at night and not be up for over 24 hours multiple times a week. Our call from home currently requires us to personally see every admission within 2 hours regardless of acuity or time of day/night. But herein lies the rub.....I like to be prepared for whatever situation may befall me. "Plan" is my middle name. So what do I do when i'm on call from Friday night to Monday morning and I don't have any nighttime admits? I anticipate them. I lie in bed and anticipate the beeping of my pager. I anticipate dragging myself out of bed at 2 am. I anticipate getting into the car and driving to the hospital in the 10 degree weather. And I anticipate getting home with just enough time to get comfortable before my alarm goes off signaling a new day of rounding on patients. I think subconsciously my body does not want to relax because it is so much harder to get out of bed during a dead sleep than not. So I lie awake waiting for the inevitable admission that never comes.

This is problematic on so many levels. There is no way I can justify being tired after a night of call when I don't even get called. I have to carefully conceal the bags under my eyes and tell my coworkers what an easy weekend of call I had. I can't blame my less-than-enthusiastic teaching and blunted affect the next day on the rough call night I just had. Sometimes, and I can't believe i'm saying this, I think I would sleep better if I just stayed at the hospital. The mere anticipation of leaving my bed and driving to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning clearly throws off my tenuous grip on stability and sends me into a spiral of anxiety the likes of which prevents my brain from shutting down. Any advice? Meditation? Hot tea? Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies? My battle against sleep deprivation continues...

Checking In (Or Taking A Break From Flogging Myself With Impunity)

Just finished my second day of my new job. Wait, has it only been 2 days?! Oy, yes it has. Not that things have been awful. On the contrary, things have been wonderful. But you know how it is when you come off of a loooonnng vacation and jump right into busting your hump and trying to look like you know what you're doing? I'm there.

My first night call is tomorrow night and i'm a bit freaked out. Not so much about the medicine....more about the finesse it takes to practice said medicine over the phone. I haven't done that in awhile so I will be exercising certain clinical muscles that are flabby with disuse. And speaking of flabby muscles....i'm not sure how I did this as a resident. By this I mean work all day running around the hospital maintaining control and order with a professional yet pleasant demeanor while fitting in teaching AND learning 'on the fly'. And then fit in a quality workout and cook a well balanced dinner. I did this as a resident, a mere 4 years ago, and I have no idea how. Because i'm certainly not doing it well now!

I'm currently propping my eyelids open and doing PREP questions on the Pedialink website. Must. Learn. Everything. But i'm not putting any pressure on myself....