Why does it feel like I just posted this? Probably because I just did... quite literally 3 days ago. Good ol' reliable rollercoaster .gif. Deja vu, anyone?
Well, it is once again time for me to switch back to a daytime schedule so that I can again attend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday board review courses. Hopefully awake this time.
My circadian rhythm's been completely thrown off. I feel like I'm in a twilight zone all the time - at time, sleepy; at other times, both sleepy yet far too awake to sleep. This is not being affected by caffeine, as I don't drink coffee. I know that when I used to drink coffee while very sleep deprived, I would sometimes get that terrible jittery-yet-sleepy sensation. Nope, this is now my body getting screwed up every which way. I feel like I physically lost a fight to someone recently and am recovering.
I haven't exercised at all (except some jogging on my way to work because I'm somehow quicker than our subway system). That's pretty much out the window this month, it seems. There's no physical energy remaining to do this.
Most days, I do stretches, and some days, I meditate. Most recently, I did both yesterday. So that's at least been a decent pattern.
Just as previously, I'm trying to maintain a calorie deficit diet, mostly by limiting carbs. I did have one carb-heavy meal a couple of nights ago, but most days I've kept them on the lower end. I believe that my completely broken sleep pattern is impairing my metabolism to a small degree, so I'm not seeing the results as quick as I have in the past. Understandable, but I'll keep trying. About 11-12 days left to go.
Now, I have a 24 hour period between the end of my most recent shift (7 a.m.) and the time I have to be at the board review tomorrow morning (also 7 a.m.), and this includes travel time which is about 1 hour each way. A totally humane schedule. Oh well.
So over the course of the next 12 hours or so, I'll make a checklist of things to accomplish, and that does include a nap which I'll be taking quite soon. It's going to be a bit busy, but this is the only time I'll have to accomplish some of these tasks because of the tightness of my schedule. Important things must be fit in, and thus they will be. Not too much choice here.
Restful times will come soon, I hope. Our hospital census is still extremely high, and I fear that my elective rotations in April are going to end up with me covering a lot of shifts yet again. It'll be a continuation of the exhausting workload that we've been under for a long time, with seemingly no end in sight. I hope things will improve within the next 2 weeks, but that's being very optimistic. The hospital doesn't care about us, and will squeeze every bit of juice they can from us before discarding us.
I will say that my last 3 shifts have been quite decent. Monday night admissions were not as bad as I'd expected (received 5 in total). Tuesday and Wednesday night I switched to consult service, where I work on emergent medicine-based (plus neurology) consults, and answer various emergent pages (which are not emergent 99% of the time).
The emergent consults and pages were very limited the past 2 nights. I was actually able to rest on the job because it wasn't busy. I also helped out my colleagues who were having a more difficult time. Of course, at this point, I have no obligation to do so - but it simply felt like the right thing to do.
Most importantly, I managed to sleep several hours this past night. This is very important, as it'll help me speed up my transition into daytime hours for my board review sessions the next few days. That was probably my biggest point of luck this week.