Slicing and dicing

0620- Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button and roll over.
0630 - Stagger out of bed and make the mad rush to shave/shower and grab a handful of jelly beans for breakfast as I run out the door.
0700 - Do the Colorectal Ward Round with Reg and Fellow whilst trying to sort out all paperwork during round so as to minimise work during day.
0800 - Enter theatre to start operating on Boss D's list. Hack, burn, chop, tie, flush anything that makes poo.
1600 - Emerge out of theatre completely exhausted to smell a rather distinct odour on ward. Walk into recently ICU-released patient's room to find black tarry smelly stuff in both stoma bag AND all over floor.
1601 - Panic.
1602 - Drag Reg and Fellow up whilst simultaneously doing a FBC/ABG/G+H and teeth-pulling radiology to get urgent X-rays.
1645 - ICU come and decide patient needs to be intubated and Boss N decides to 'wait and see' if patient needs any further management.
1730 - admit out of hours patient for surgery who is 'allergic' to injections and on a special diet of 'red delicious apples and snow peas'.
1800 - Start overtime shift 1 hour late.
1810 - Get called to theatre to assist with a LOL who needs a hip replacement.
2115 - Finish the carpentry job on afroementioned LOL.
2120 - Get called to assist with laparotomy for a ruptured appendix.
2130 - Ask permission to run out quickly and buy a hotdog before passing out from hypoglycaemia.
2300 - Finish 1st laparotomy to discover my sick patient from earlier that day is now passing black smelly maelena from every orrifice and needs an urgent laparotomy too.
0300 - Finish removing dead bowel and walk home with the stench of maelena up my nose.
0330 - Sleep
0730 - Wake up and rush to hospital to start another laparotomy... the saga continues.

So yeah operating almost non stop from 7am till 3am is NOT cool. Even if it IS for a guy whose abdo is full of dark tarry blood-poo requiring 8 litres of washout. Even if I do get paid lots of overtime money. Even if we did save some guys grandma* I was so tired that I was worried I'd slip with the knife/diathermy/stitches and hurt someone. I was day dreaming whilst retracting abdominal wall. it was only the offensive odour of maelena that stopped me from succumbing to my fatigue.

Fortunately the registrar on call was my day time reg so she generously granted me a 1 (one) hour sleep in before having to return to assist with another operation. As much as I luv being back in the scrubs, I'm kinda glad that in 90 minsutes I can hang up the scrubs for the rest of the year and go back to 8:30 starts and free breakfasts.

Adios sterile fields and ninja-like face masks!

*as I grabbed the late night hot dog for some sustanence I overheard the guy in front of me in the queue talking about how his grandma was about to have her appendix out. Turns out it was my 1st lap case for the night.