Sunday, January 3, 2010
A congenital sleep disturbance
I don't sleep much, haven't since college. Maybe due to how drinking might have affected my sleep center in my brain, perhaps because of being an athlete, and when I didn't work out, I just didn't feel like sleeping. I have enjoyed my extra time awake, I get to write, study and whatever else grabs me when I am awake that extra time, when no one else is available. In medical school, I had a painful abcess in my mouth, which kept me awake at times, and it enabled me to stay focused on my studies for more hours. And more is always better when you have so little time to learn so much. I finally went to the dentist, who pulled out a few rotten teeth, and then I was in my internship, we worked somewhere between 75 and 105 hours per week; after a call (when we worked for essentially two days, something we did in my hospital, every three days)I went to the gym, worked out for an hour, then went out dancing. Then slept a few hours, and went back to work. A day of call started normal time (usually about 7 am in the morning, when you went on morning rounds, that was when you told the resident supervising you about the patients you were following, and he told you what you had to get done that day for them). The call ended the next day, you were supposed to be allowed to go home early, but a typical day required you to go home at around five pm because you really had to get all your normal days work done before you signed out to the next intern on call. The reason you had to do all of your work, is because if you didn't, you ended up getting a similar extended list when you got back the next day, and your coworkers would dump on you, so you did your work as quickly as you could, and you made every effort to finish, and you did it as correctly as you could, because you would get reamed at morning rounds if anything was incorrectly done. The system worked to teach doctors to be thourough and quick, but it killed any regular sleep system you might have had. On call you might go to your call room and try to doze, but a nurse working the night shift might call you any time because she might need a signature or a doctor to figure out how to help a patient in distress. You were lucky to sleep two hours on a normal call, but you really couldn't complain, because it really helped you to become a doctor, it helped to drum in the language of medicine so you could speak it and think it no matter how tired you were. It was quite an interesting process. But the sleep part of it, well, I still don't sleep much, I sleep about three to five hours most nights, and I don't seem to miss the sleep that much. However, Jason seems to be aware of when I wake, and sometimes he anticipates it, and he is awake already. He wants me to do stuff with him at two and three in the morning. I don't want to, not because I'm not awake, but because I'm a little selfish, and I want to write, or read email, of just goof off. Lately, though, I have decided to play games with him on the computer, or watch educational videos with him or sing songs. This usually lasts about an hour to two hours, eventually he goes back to sleep, but not without some serious protesting, then he sleeps later, and I usually can get my jogging in. I fear he's kind of learning my erratic sleep habits. But, I think sleeping is over rated anyway.
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