Life is always like this - when it's happening everything seems to be in slow motion, yet when it's over it seems to have gone too quickly. Finally, I've finished my six weeks of nights, and will have no more nights for the rest of the year!
Most of my nights were long and painful, and I struggled with not only hunger and fatigue, but with unfamiliar diseases, cultural and language barriers, and the sheer volume of work to be done. I did feel desperate a few times, and it wasn't pretty. Sometimes I wanted to scream "There's five of you (ED doctors) and one of me! Can't you do a better job so I can have an easier time?". Often I was given a completely useless story by a completely clueless person, and have to start from square one, which drove me to the brink of exasperation.
Morning handover was also unpleasant at times. Though most consultants tried to make it a neutral environment, I often felt like I was on trial. I called it the solo standup show of Nancy, and it really was like that, facing a whole room of up to 30 people. One time I started giggling uncontrollably when I relayed that the patient had been hit on the head by his wife wielding a mango stick, and not a single other soul laughed along. All I could hear in the big quiet room was my own loud giggles rising like sobs out of me, fraught with such physical and mental exhaustion. I was so frustrated when I felt like I was being criticised, and sometimes it was just the last thing I needed to make me slouch home like a walking corpse and collapse into bed, unconscious for the next 10 hours.
So in conclusion, it was tough. This job is so different from my last that I am still learning the ropes, and six weeks of nights was the worst way to start. But I have to put that behind me now, see all the positives (all the amazing stories I heard and crazy cases I saw), and look forward to my next job, starting tomorrow.
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