Finally getting to do some procedures (after 3 months in various ICUs, it’s about freakin’ time!!). I got my first arterial line on the first poke… and have missed all three since then. But then… my fellow has missed on those ones as well, so I don’t feel so bad. I slid the needle right into the internal jugular with gorgeous flow back on the central line placement today, and only required a little bit of assistance to get all of the wires, scapels, and catheters in. No major bleeding and NO pneumothorax, a double plus. Hopefully, the ICU will start picking up a little more and I’ll have more procedures to do. I hope to get proficient enough that I can actually move to the teaching part of the “see one, do one, teach one” model. I’m excited.

I woke up this morning to my pager going off around 6:45, telling me that I had 2 patients to see this morning. As they were patients I was already familiar with, I paged my SMS and rolled over and fell back to sleep, intending to get up in time so I could be to work about an hour later. Of course, I overslept a little and was heading out the door right at 8 o’clock, when my pager started going off. Stat admission. Patient intubated. Patient coding… and I’m at least 15 minutes away. Luckily the cards resident was there and covered me while I raced into work, but my day was rather flustered.

Attending and I are getting along better, although I still don’t know how to read him. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to keep my other SMS from breaking down entirely, as she’s convinced that he hates her and it makes her more flustered than she ever is when she’s presenting the same stuff to me. Being a resident in some ways is so much more difficult than being a intern, which I knew it was going to be so, but I thought more in terms of “I have to know more”, not so much of “I have to know more, and teach, and manage every patient, and direct a team, and tell attendings how to treat others and fix problems, and run codes, and…” I miss being an intern. I probably won’t be saying that come October when I’m the junior resident on Neurology again. 🙂

Think I’m making it an early night. I’ve been living on six or so hours for the last week and it’s starting to wear me down. Not good.