Friday, January 14, 2005
creature of the night
I am now part of those strange nightshift workers around the world who sleep during the day and work at night. We have no tan, we are often a little quirky, and we have no sense of Circadian rhythm. I just worked my fourth night shift in a row. I will work four more starting Saturday, and then I only have a day to rotate to evenings. I see 730am on my ride home, and watch the Today show as I'm falling asleep. I wake up when the sun goes down (picture Kenny Chesney) and eat dinner with Andy. It's a strange existence.
Other than feeling out of touch with the rest of the world, I am enjoying night shift. The pace is much slower and less stressful, which allows me to take time to learn lots of details about the hospital and my unit, instead of learning on the fly and getting harried orders barked at me in the frenzy of dayshift. I get to really study up on my patients too, and since they don't have any visitors, I think we have better conversations (that is, when they are awake and talking). Like last night, we had a very confused woman who was wandering the halls and trying to escape down the stairwell. On dayshift, this could have been an enormous inconvenience and frustrated the busy staff (I know, I've worked it). But last night we just took all the linens and tousled them in a basket, told her the laundry needed to be folded, and she sat quietly folding at the nurses' station for HOURS. It was quite cute.
Yesterday it was a BALMY 69 degrees here in State College. Being a vampire, I was actually sleeping and didn't get to enjoy it, but none the less, that's crazy warm for January in PA! Today it is going to be 29. Yuck.
I got the neatest grill for Christmas, it's like a George Foreman, but there are three different inserts: waffle, grill, and quesadilla. And they are all removeable and dishwasher safe. I make chicken on it last night for dinner, very good. Can't wait to try quesadillas! MMMMMM Bueno!
Alrighty, I've been up all night and I'm getting loopy. Time to head home and watch soem daytime TV until I fall asleep. BTW, the sucky thing about sleeping during the day is that no one else thinks about the fact that you're sleeping. UPS, solicitors calling, neighbors, roof-workers, friends calling. It's hard to really stay asleep. So if you call me leave a message b/c I'm turning the phones off from now on.
Later!
Other than feeling out of touch with the rest of the world, I am enjoying night shift. The pace is much slower and less stressful, which allows me to take time to learn lots of details about the hospital and my unit, instead of learning on the fly and getting harried orders barked at me in the frenzy of dayshift. I get to really study up on my patients too, and since they don't have any visitors, I think we have better conversations (that is, when they are awake and talking). Like last night, we had a very confused woman who was wandering the halls and trying to escape down the stairwell. On dayshift, this could have been an enormous inconvenience and frustrated the busy staff (I know, I've worked it). But last night we just took all the linens and tousled them in a basket, told her the laundry needed to be folded, and she sat quietly folding at the nurses' station for HOURS. It was quite cute.
Yesterday it was a BALMY 69 degrees here in State College. Being a vampire, I was actually sleeping and didn't get to enjoy it, but none the less, that's crazy warm for January in PA! Today it is going to be 29. Yuck.
I got the neatest grill for Christmas, it's like a George Foreman, but there are three different inserts: waffle, grill, and quesadilla. And they are all removeable and dishwasher safe. I make chicken on it last night for dinner, very good. Can't wait to try quesadillas! MMMMMM Bueno!
Alrighty, I've been up all night and I'm getting loopy. Time to head home and watch soem daytime TV until I fall asleep. BTW, the sucky thing about sleeping during the day is that no one else thinks about the fact that you're sleeping. UPS, solicitors calling, neighbors, roof-workers, friends calling. It's hard to really stay asleep. So if you call me leave a message b/c I'm turning the phones off from now on.
Later!
# posted by Jenni @ 09:15 
