No hitter-ish?

So, I just finished my first official call, and yet I feel like I did nothing. Since I haven't had OB (or any other REAL rotation yet), the 2nd year had to stay, which was pretty good. The night started off benign enough with me sitting in the call room watching the last couple innings of Webb's 3rd consecutive complete game shut-out. Sweet! Then, just as I decided to get up and write my ICU night-notes (2 of them). The pager goes off calling me to pronounce a death on the 3rd floor. My 2nd yr was right there and was like "C'mon, I'll show you what to do." Good deal. So on the way over, I realized I forgot my intern-Bible, and decided to run back and grab it. When I got back to the floor, I was greeted by a "Forget this for a sec, we've got a stand-by delivery to go to." "Great!" I thought, it's about to hit the fan. Well, we show up for this "911" page, only to stand around staring at lady-parts for 45 minutes with nothing happening, until her private attending showed up and said "OK, I'll take it from here." Thankless. So then on to pronouncing the death. Creepy but easy.

Now, I finally went to write the night notes on the 2 ICU pts. That was fine, but just as I was finishing the 2nd note, I got a page. "Your pt in 363 is supposed to get 15u Lantus now, but she didn't eat dinner, and her BG is 165, and I just gave her 3u Apidra to cover her sliding scale, sooooo can I hold her Lantus for tonight?" Expecting that this would be the first of many ridiculous pages, I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time figuring out her insulin doses for the next 24 hours, I replied "Sure." Done and done. Then it was back to the call room to sit and wait (watched Conan O'Brien). But that was the last time my pager wen off until 5am when the alarm went off to tell me to start rounding on 1/2 of the patients for the next guy on call.

I THOUGHT this would mean I could go home right after check-out. Not so much. After check out, I hopped up, and proceeded to the cafeteria to grab breakfast #2, thinking I'd take it home with me. Well, while waiting in line to sign for it, the chief came up and asked, "So Brent, are you just gonna hang out here or in the Dr's Lounge?" "Ummmm, no I was going home." AWKWARD. The puzzled look on his face cannot be put into words, but I'm sure mine was even better. "Oh, well usually the intern sticks around until a senior can see your pts, and then goes to rounds with the attending." What in the crap is he freakin' talking about. I held that in. I explained that my understanding was that since I woke EARLY before checkout to round on 1/2 the pts, that I could take off after checkout (at ~8am). Nope. He wanted to go see my pts first. So I got to sit in the Drs Lounge while he read all my notes. Awesome. Then, when I didn't here back by 9, I gave him a little page to let him know I was still there. He came by, said he'd like me to stay until the attending came for rounds, but since he didn't know when that would be, he "guessed I could go ahead and go" and he'd talk to the attending later. I added that he should probably clear this up with her, because as far as I know, I was the only one that this has happened too (except Jeremy who DIDN'T round on pts early like some kinda jerk).

So the moral of this big long story is that you should find out if waking up early to round on pts will mean that you can leave early vs sitting around doing nothing while the senior reads through your notes. If I had known I was supposed to stay, I would have just slept in 'till 7:30!! Well, at least I got plenty of sleep. Hope all your calls are as good (minus the AM red-tape).