#guys ive been going to bed at like. 9 pm. why am i so sleepy

[dumbass-tm]

*twirls my hair* hiii tged fandom :3

idfk anymore im so tired 😭😭😭

[unwillingtopost]

Today’s Worries

This is my first post in forever. That’s an actual date.

It seemed a small thing (which I suppose by definition isn’t, or at least is not easily attainable, or omg, is this going to be boring to read later, or what) to commit to writing every day JUST WHAT I DID so I could remember. How hard could that be? I did that for a while while I rode the train to and from work. So the date is July 1, 2018. This has been my week.

1. Last Monday, June 25, I was scheduled for THD, or transanal hemorrhoidal dearterialization surgery to get rid of the hemorrhoids I have been suffering from since approximately 2001 and which I decided I wanted to get rid of in preparation for my backpacking adventure with Miles in the Grant Tetons in approximately four weeks.

2. Last Monday, June 25, I arrived at Glenbrook Hospital at 8 am, unprepared for the pain and misery to come. At 9.15 or so, Dr. Spitz walked in just as I was about to walk into the bathroom and said he’d come back, but I said, no, I want to tell you that I have a possible abscess in my tooth and my dentist prescribed antibiotics which I haven’t taken yet, and is that okay? Can we still do the surgery? Also, I’m in a terrible amount of pain. He said it was fine.

3. Last Monday, June 25, while I was driving to Glenbrook Hospital, I was distracted by periodic waves of blinding pain alternately emanating from my upper left tooth and my lower left tooth which started out with a yawning acknowledgement of eerie feeling, widened into a small storm brewing and spreading over an unsuspecting piece of airy geography, and then swallowed me whole in a fracturing starbust of pulsating, scorching and piercing pain which stretched across my upper and lower teeth and up along my jawbone, into my ear and finally wisped out over my scalp and into my brain just as I was about to lose my grip on the steering wheel while traveling 50 mph in rush hour traffic.

4. Last Monday, June 25, At about 9.30, Dr. Cochran, the anesthesiologist, walked in and said you have two choices, and I recommend the first one, but I’ll tell you about the second one because people want to know it. So I recommend you get a spinal. We put a needle in your spine and your body under your waist will go to sleep. The alternative, which a guy yesterday just next door took, and I don’t know, because I don’t recommend it, is for me to intubate you and shove a tube down your throat and put you under total general anesthesia, which I don’t recommend.

5. Last Monday, June 25, a nurse came in and said she was the pre-op nurse and asked me some questions that I don’t remember. Maybe all the same things about my medical history. Oh, and everyone who walked into the room asked me my first and last name and my date of birth. Every single person. Every single time. Then she left, and she appears in a strange spot later. Hold on.

6. Last Monday, June 25, another nurse came in and said she was the surgical nurse and would be taking me back to the operating room. Her name was Kelsey and she said people stayed away from her because she was a bad driver, a story she told me as she guided my bed down the hall. (It hadn’t occurred to me yet that I would be wheeled into the operating room at all, let alone on my bed, which I hadn’t realized was mobile). She was also wearing a sweater because she said it was freezing in the operating room, which she also remarked was a good thing because bacteria bred in warm, wet places, and we definitely didn’t want any bacteria breeding in the operating room, did we?

7. Last Monday, June 25, Kelsey brought me into the operating room where Dr. Cochran was waiting, and the pre-op nurse, and they asked me to sit on the side of the bed with my legs hanging over and the pre-op nurse got into front of me and put her hands on my chest (to keep me from falling over? I’m not sure, but it was a very intimate position.) while Kelsey and Dr. Cochran lifted the back of my gown to give me the spinal, which felt exactly like someone inserting a needle into your spine, from the popping sound of the needle piercing the skin and then the force it takes for someone to push the needle into your spine. Kelsey guided the needle into my spine with the help of her sharp fingernails, which she used as pencil lines to mark where she wanted to put the needle into my spine. I wasn’t sure if I was receiving four injections or just one injection four times, but I felt approximately four needles enter my spine. At one point, I heard Dr. Cochran say, well, that would have been difficult for anyone.

8. Last Monday, June 25, Kelsey also said something about putting something in my IV to make me sleepy and then Dr. Spitz was there, and they said they were ready, and then I was waking up with my head on my hands and I was flat on my stomach, and they wheeled me out of the operating room back into my room and I came in, and Laura was there, and her mom, and they rolled me into the new bed. (The old bed? Was I on a stretcher? Maybe I ruined my first bed with operation detritus.)

9. Last Monday, June 25, I’m not really sure if Laura and her mom were there when I got back into the room or not. I think maybe the nurse called them. I had another nurse then, who spent the rest of the day with me, and she was great, but I can’t remember her name right now. She had a white woman’s name. Not Tiffany or Fiona or Jessica or Lisa or Lindsay? Maybe Lindsay? I don’t remember.

10. I’m still on Monday, June 25, and she brought me applesauce (I of course couldn’t eat anything else they were offering -- why is food in hospitals SO BAD?) which I devoured and water (did I mention I couldn’t eat or drink anything from 10 pm the night before) and coffee.

11. My legs were numb, like dead, like no feeling, like trippy, and I could kind of move by lifting my butt but I couldn’t feel my butt and it seemed like I was wearing a lot of stuff on my butt. (This post is largely going to be about my butt from here onwards, FYI). At some point, with everyone in my room, I lifted my sheet to figure out what that thing was on my leg, and it was my penis, which I couldn’t feel. “My penis is numb,” I said, and Laura said, you said that in front of my mother, and I said, but it is. I can’t feel it. My penis is totally numb.

12. Then there was the recovery time, which on the phone the day before with Nurse Nancy (I think) said would be 1-2 hours after surgery. But the day went on and on and on and on and I was in the room with Laura and her mother and they got me crudite and almonds from the hospital cafeteria and coffee and I ate and drank as much as I could, but I was just killing time. I even tried to put the TV on at some point, and I was SO TIRED. There was this whole thing where they said I couldn’t leave until I could walk AND pee. Apparently, my body had peed some in my bed, but that didn’t count as I couldn’t feel it, and it wasn’t measurable, and they had to measure it, because we were in a hospital and it had to be recorded.

13. I decided to try to walk and they said I had to be able to swing both my legs over to the side of the bed without holding them up with my hands, but I could only really do my left one, and they said the left side often recovered more quickly than the right side, but they didn’t know why. Anyway, nurse lady Lindsay (not her real name) brought in another nurse lady (Laura wasn’t allowed to help, for professional liability reasons, I imagine, Northshore Hospital thank you very much) and apparently, even though I really wanted to be able to swing my legs over to the side, wanting was not enough, and I cheated by lifting my right leg with my hand and they said fine, okay, and brought a walker over and said can you put your feet on the floor and I could kind of (but not really) and I tried to stand up, but there was no way, so they said I had to get back into bed and they gave me a container to try and pee into. Which is so hard to do at all, but especially in bed, and especially apparently when your penis is numb, or mostly.

14. It’s still Monday, June 25, and I finally was able to walk with help and made it to the bathroom where both nurses helped me sit on the toilet and then stood there and I was like, I can’t pee if you’re watching, and they were like, we’ve seen it all, and I was like, I’m sure, but this is MINE, and I sat and I could feel how fucked up my body was and I peed into the container 100 ml and then 200 ml and I had to really strain, but they finally were satisfied and let me get up and let me stand at the toilet, where I was finally able to pee more, and they let me wash my hands, and finally said I could go home. We were only there for like 8-9 hours (they said it would be 4-5). They took me out in a wheelchair and Laura went and got the car and the nurse stood with me, but wouldn’t let Laura take a picture of us.

15. Driving home was torture. Every bump hurt. Laura had gotten my opiod and stool softener prescriptions from the hospital pharmacy, and I did my best to hold my breath, even though the painkillers were kicking in and I still had a lot of numbness, and I think when we finally got home, Laura helped me into the house, and up the stairs and I got into bed. I also peed in my pants a little on the way home and could only tell because my pants were wet.

Okay, that was Monday. I must have fallen asleep. Laura skipped her meeting because they said I shouldn’t be alone.

Tuesday.

I took a lot of pills and maybe watched some movies. I still had about 8 hours of CLE to finish before Friday, so I watched some CLE videos. My teeth were still rocking the pain out of my whole being, so the painkillers were serving double duty for my teeth and my butt. I tried to heat up some leftovers of soft food and I dropped it all over the kitchen floor, which I then had to clean because we have a mouse and an ant problem, both of which increased in my week of being inept and unconscious.

Wait, now I remember. I woke up really early and went downstairs to the basement and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Later I watched Heat. When Abe got home, I watched Moana with them.

NOTE: ALL I THOUGHT ABOUT THIS WHOLE WEEK WAS PEEING AND POOPING, i.e., CAN I PEE? CAN I POOP? CAN I DO EITHER WITHOUT IT HURTING LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING RAZOR RASH PIZZA CHEESE? IN MY BUTT?

I was sent home from the hospital with a sitz bath, which is a plastic bowl which fits over the toilet and it comes with a IV-like bag with plastic tubing, and you’re supposed to fill the bowl with warm water and fill the bag with warm water so it replenishes the warm water in the bowl (while of course hanging it from your suddenly-present IV rack in your bathroom), and then sit on it on the toilet and the water spills into the toilet and you feel relief. Except that’s a giant big watery mess and the tube sprays water everywhere when you can’t figure out how to clamp it correctly. I tried with no luck and then remembered how nurse with no name said one of her patients said it worked better in the bath (and I admit at first I was wondering if I was supposed to be pooping in this, but the answer to that is no) so I set it up in the bath and it DID bring relief although it FUCKING HURTS the rest of your butt to sit with your butthole in a plastic bowl of hot water because the sides of the plastic bowl are sharp and you have to hold yourself up on the sides of the bathtub. So yes, relief, and what a big pain in the ass, literally, figuratively and every other way. That’s my review.

ALSO don’t forget how much my teeth still hurt.

I didn’t go to the site meeting or to band, my regular Tuesday night haunts.

Wednesday

Oh, we were supposed to host a party on Wednesday. We were going to weed the backyard and clean the house. And I couldn’t walk and I was on massive painkillers. But intrepid Laura went on anyway. She stayed home from school and worked and cooked (and I had the strength and energy to cut up a shit load of crudite and also pack most of the kids’ lunches.) I mostly stayed in the basement sleeping and watching stuff and doing CLE and then people came over and I took a shower (after possibly the first successful sitz bath) and went outside (WALKED!) and took an extra pain pill and tried to be as social as possible, but ended up sitting on the couches with everyone at the end of the night and falling asleep (well, fighting falling asleep which everyone noticed) so everyone went home, and that ended up the only time I saw Cullen and Jason on their big trip here on Searah’s birthday to make up for leaving her on her birthday two years ago, and there was also a lot of kid drama (really, Daphne said he gender identity was a cat, SIGH). And jumping on my couches. And drinking. And lots of pizza.

I didn’t go to the board meeting. I didn’t go because of my pain and recovery. I don’t know if I would have gone if it was just the party. I didn’t have the luxury of choice.

Thursday.

I drove Miles to the bus in the morning, which was crazy because I hadn’t driven in days, and hadn’t sat in a car seat in days AND was still on painkillers (AND MY TEETH STILL WERE KILLING ME) and then went home and tried to poop for hours until I went to a CM design meeting and brought a pillow and sat on a chair and talked for 2-3 hours with architects and designers.

Then I went to the store and picked up stuff for dinner and then went home and collapsed. Finished watching CLE videos.

Friday.

I went in for my root canal. I told the dentist that I had been taking the antibiotic since Monday, and I was on painkillers, and my pain was off the charts, but I wasn’t convinced that it was coming from my top or bottom or both OR that the pain was entirely in my head, and he said it wasn’t in my head at all and it sounded like I had an abscess. I was able to sit in the chair for an hour while he and his assistant tortured my teeth because of the painkillers plus the local novocaine anesthetic that he shot me full of.

THIS WAS MY WEEK FOR ANESTHETIC! I forgot to talk about the phone call I had with Dr. Spitze’s nurse about my progress, and I said I was still kind of numb in my perenium area (this was Wednesday, I think) and she said that might have been the lidocaine they injected you with. AREN’T THEY SUPPOSED TO TELL ME THAT BEFORE THEY DO IT?

Laura arranged for her mother to pick me up after my root canal because I didn’t plan for how I would get home (Laura drove me) in my condition. She dropped me off at home. That night, Miles had a sleepover and Abe and Laura went to the beach with Jason and Cullen and Searah and the gang, and I stayed home by my lonesome.

(New theme -- I stayed home by my lonesome A LOT this week. I usually don’t mind that, but this week was particularly difficult.)

I had been going to bed at about 9, which was easy with the painkillers. Tonight Miles kept texting me wanting me to send money to someone on Paypal and then Abe and Laura came home from the beach, but I finally fell asleep.

It’s also been wicked hot here. Like 100 degrees, blazing, oppressive, exhausting heat. In all of this heat, Laura came home with the dogs and a 50 lb bag of dog food, so now the dogs were here too.

Saturday.

My mornings this week, after my excellent opioid fueled sleep, consisted of me waking feeling rested but with tremendous pressure in my bladder and bowels (which this week have felt like all one unified joint bipartisan pressure), and a walk down to the basement to my personal post-THD bathroom where my sitz bath and my witch hazel pads are waiting for me. And then I sit, and it hurts SO MUCH and I can’t really pee, and I definitely can’t poop. I then stand to pee and guess I’m not pooping. Except for some early success on Wednesday, accompanied by earth shattering straining, I have not pooped, even though it’s all I think about. Spoiler alert: today is going to be all about poop.

But first the farmer’s market. Have to pick up our CSA. Then home, and then pick up Miles at his friend’s house. Then get my renewal of my pain prescription. Then finally home, and the decision not to take another pain pills because MAYBE the tooth pain is lessening, and maybe I can do without the pain pills for my butt.

The day bores on, hot and still. Laura and Abe are out at a farm. Miles is home and it set to babysit. He has some emergency about sneakers for which he convinces Laura to take him to Wicker Park and lend him $400. HOW? But all this time, I have been in the BATHROOM! Pooping. With great effort. Standing. Squatting. Squatting ON the toilet. Squatting in the bath. Pushing like my life depended on it. Pushing like my poop baby had to come, that it would die if it didn’t. AND MY POOR TENDER LITTLE SURGERIED BUTTHOLE. I pooped a million times on Saturday. Watched American Honey, a 3 hour movie which took me 6 hours to watch because of poop.

And remember no pain pills!

Sunday. Today.

Same morning. Great pressure. To the basement bathroom. Actually pee and poop. (Interesting note: this week at least, it was really hard for me to fully pee while I was sitting. I’ll just leave that there.)

Then more of this week’s super high fiber diet, which is kind of my normal diet but MORE -- lots of yogurt, oatmeal, fruits, and vegetables. Pears, apples, bananas, pineapple, cherries, raspberries, blueberries, raisins.

I forgot what else I was going to say. They’re all out to dinner and I’m alone. I’ve been pooping approximately every 2-3 hours and then 20 minutes in a sitz bath and then a bath, and man, my legs have never been washed so often.

***

Part of why I don’t do these very often is that they take FOREVER. Which is approximately the date of my next post, and which definitely will not be about poop.

I didn’t even get to today’s worries, which were about mortality and blood pressure. I walked to CVS in the heat to buy a blood pressure monitor and to exercise my legs which felt heavy and bad, but didn’t match up with any of the diseases I researched on the internet that included painful legs because I didn’t have any of the other symptoms.

[haeroniel-doliet]

i need more money to buy little art

honestly tho feeling like for that ideal goal existence i’ll try get to someday, i’ll needa be making proper money comfortable and good so i can spend all i like on society 6 and other to buy shirts and bags and just everything to a house all in different art prints (mostly florals) bc just those pictures are  like everything i want but just so expensive. i’m trying to sum down like 10 to stickers, bc i wanna do up my laptop, but dedicating to a single decal (thats like 25 ON SALE) is too much esp since i love so much. so ive kinda decided to get a hard cover for the laptop just in case i break it, and just in case i do break my laptop that i can keep the stickers on the hard case and dont lose them to replaced parts. idk seems smart. ill probs buy a kinda shady cover off of ebay for 5 or 6 pound and then spend 20 on stickers for it :] since theyre on sale till 8 am today and its 3 am im probs just gonna settle and order them. might order cover tomorrow w my dad bc i need trust assurance. hes not all on board on the stickers so im just gonna go for it. theyre gonna be like my post cards. i buy so many every place. and no. not trashy postcards. i want art. i have so many postcards of paintings in galleries and so many from comic con art valleys (guess who wants to get so much more and 100% will) i love original art the most when its pretty to me and like everyone who sees it. simples okay but i prefer soft and detailed. excited now i can go to con and also be looking for stickers bc maybe ill get a few cool ones that wont cost me as much as the society 6 ones do. and then my laptop can replicate my walls, displaying all the art ive loved that ive been able to take with me (bc theres so much i obviously dont have on my walls) anyway im looking at these and making some small bc i suddenly realise this laptops got realestate. and the saddest thing w stickers (literally why i had one of those waxy paged sticker books as a child) is that i cant dedicate stickers to a single spot. its so much dedication. what if i buy a bigger sticker and it wont fit? what if i get the perfect sticker for that spot and it wont fit? (over lap i guess) how can i be sure i put them in the right spots to start with? augh i dont really wanna cover just half of it and obviously leave space bc that puts pressure on finding stickers and i might get ones i dont love. i cant get sick of any one bc itll be there  (joy of having multiple mean theres less getting sick of anything). anyway i think im happy w the sizes of these 10 stickers and can work w them (also for now i think im just gonna be going around the edges and leaving the apple logo as it is, esp bc it glows and theres already this shitty old smiley face sticker from my old psych teacher and i kinda dont wanna get rid of it, i just wanna add things around it so it doesnt look so: clean (actually dirty) laptop that a child marked as their own) 

anyway society 6 has random discounts all the time which is p rad and maybe the day im ready to invest in my own living space and dont feel obliged to check w my parents about just about any purchase, i’ll then subscribe to something thatll tell me what discount is on. that in mind, i think i’ll only get the 9 now, that hopefully wont cost too much, and leave a bunch in my wishlist, bc there’ll be another discount (this is 20% off everything)  and maybe that’ll be like 50% off stickers and boy then when my collection is underway you bet ill go for it. and like maxx sticks on their sketch book, if i dedicate to a new book maybe ill get more for that and have a pretty thing to keep and reminisce over (tho knowing me, ill not use it much bc i have a need for pretty things to stay perfect and presentable, and i have a need for everything that i might show to others to be like near perfect otherwise its sucks and ill feel bad bc i dont wanna show it off to people. like my art book, sure i couldve made it all experimental and crap and then edited the real pages together on the computer. but no. i needed everypage to be presentable and pretty and handwritten and creative. and they must go page after page, its so awkward showing someone something and then going “oh wait now these few are empty sorry yeah heres the next page” so i baasically have  a book with mhmmm 20-26 pages of beautiful spreads that im quite proud of inside beautiful covers ( i knew id want to be presenting it for years to come) and the back pages are just...empty. and theyll probably stay that way bc i no longer have projects to be doing to fill them with. maybe one day ill grow into myself and grow out the fear of ruining what ive achieved and fill some with new projects to please myself and be an indepenednt artist not just a teacher pleaser. you know its like that with my work too, like it has to have a direction and a plan that will be achieved, and its terribly frustrating when that vision doesnt happen. but i think thats the same with everyone. 

anyway on a side note, dont you guys think its so fun and cool how ive not done my post labs that were due last friday? how every night ends up being 3-4 am until i go... mhmmmm yeah i guess nothing is happening. like i hope id bloom and do work at that 11pm-3am window and then i get here, suddenly having lost all track and sense of time and just sigh. its wasted, its basically tuesday already. have to keep telling myself dates bc it moves so weird. i planned on getting shit done two days ago. here we are regardless. and the most ill get done is get those stickers ordered bc that is i guess what ive been half focused on for mhmmm5 hrs. then ill save my 7 dollars or whatever, have stickers on the way, tomorrow order the case and thats one insignificant thing done. then the question will be have i looked at summer jobs? no of course not ive looked at ballet courses. shush. i havent showered for days bc theyve just slipped by too laying in bed, maybe tomorrow ill take a shower and pick up all the trash and tissues on the ground. maybe i will. i know i wont get real work done tonight, and already ill be sleepy till 1 pm and by then mom will be again on me abt sleeping to latesoo... yeah no point. and here i thought id make a quick totes relatable short post about how i need more money to buy stickers and maybe a brief my ideal life is to have enough money to spend on art being in every part of my life and all this  being unique so people love coming to my house and go wow its so original and cool. and that turned into a word vent thats so far taken me over half an hour. hi my batterys dying. 

lng story short, i’ll order the stickers currently in my basket after so much though, suck it up and do it and know that i have a bunch over in my wishlist for that next maybe even better sale when it happens. the only thing is im taking all the rest as transparent which for sure dulls them down (yeah white background looks sick but for some its just more classy w transparent, then theres this one bear i’m 100% naming wojtek thats in white bc i feel it’ll be best for him, and i guess having him in white will set that theres no clear rules to follow and worst case if it doesnt fit he can come chill on the keyboard side next to my mouse pad thing) honestly i cant tell if i should be getting them all in white and just hope that theyll look gorgeous no matter what. yikes 3 dollar shipping for stickers, ok itll actually be 19.62 pound and using euro card 22.50 in  euros.... am i dumb? maybe. and tho im supposed to be saving money up so i have some, i also did get birthday money sorta recently soo... birthday gift from them. first set of stickers. deep breaths ok. my parents told me when i bugged them that i just have to make a decision and not ask them all the time, and he said to get 3 stickers i told him id pick 12 so i think getting 9 is reasonable. also oh shit realising that the delivery time is 1-3 weeks and im staying here only 1 and a half more so i should really order it to scotland even tho it might get ther ebefore i do bc my parents might not rly want to send them up to me. idk ok order to scotland, thank f at least one of my flat mates is staying and tbh i should really bring her some chocolate... shes done me faavours. 

[inmed]

Obsgyn Hell in Pati

Would you fly in an airplane if you were told the pilots have been forced to work 32 hour non-stop shifts? No. You wouldn’t. Even a child can tell you that we need 8 hours of sleep in every 24 hour period. Common sense: skipping sleep immediately becomes evident as the senses dull, memory gets hazy, mood gets irritable, and decision-making ability goes down the hole. Do these symptoms sound familiar? Yeah, the same thing happens to people drunk on alcohol. A sleep-deprived pilot is no better than a drunk pilot. And nobody will be at ease in an airplane knowing the guy in the cockpit is drunk or sleep-deprived.

If we wouldn’t trust a sleep-deprived pilot, why do we trust sleep-deprived doctors? We can’t blame the passengers and we can’t blame the patients. They probably have no clue and they blindly place their trust in the hands of the professionals.

Sadly, the people who made the decisions to have doctors work 32-hour shifts are doctors themselves: the experts of human physiology! These are the very same professionals who prescribe rest more than any other medicine! Isn’t that ironic and amazingly stupid?

Well, whoever that decided that koas have to pull 32-hour shifts must have the IQ of a ping-pong ball who has failed at understanding the most basic physiological aspect of humans other than the need to breathe: the need to sleep. Not only should this person be stripped of their medical license, they should also be jailed for putting patient’s lives at risk. If I was the chief of an airline company and I demanded that my pilots shall work 32-hour shifts without sleep, and people found out: I would deserve to be jailed. Why should this practice be accepted in the hospital?

Okay, now that I’ve made my four paragraph preamble to set the mood for what’s to come, let me start my diary-like blog entry:

Obsgyn is my first big station. I had Forensic before this. Forensic was basically a load of paperwork and waiting 24/7 for the inevitable: a dead body in the hospital requiring an autopsy ASAP so the family can bury it in the morning. So even though there were just around 10 autopsies during the four week period, the constant stress was irritating: sleeping with the ringtone volume on max. There’s not much else to say about Forensics: it was stinky, we didn’t do much other than get strained wrists from writing endless reports. 

Ok, back to Obsgyn. It is 10 weeks long. That’s two and a half times as long as a small department (such as ENT, Neurology, Forensics, etc.) The first couple of weeks we were in Sardjito. The following three weeks were spent in RSUD Sleman, my favorite hospital so far. Those three weeks were alright despite the 32-hour shifts thanks to the many opportunities to sleep in the comfortable koas room or just quietly escape the hospital. Still, 32 hours are 32 hours and it is absolutely exhausting.  I would say “daily” but a day only has 24 hours. Our 32 hour shifts were “daily” in the sense that when one ended (at around 2pm), we’d go home and then be back the very next morning at 6am for the next 32-hour shift. There is no such thing as “weekends” or “holidays”. Let me give you a run-down of what one shift looks like:

5 am: wake up. shower. call a GoCar by 5:30. 6 am: arrive at RSUD Sleman. Go up to the 3rd floor where the Obsgyn stuff is. Start going through all the patient’s medical records in both the ward and the “VK” (birthing room) and noting down the “SOAP” along with some other important info in my notebook. 7 am: the doctor arrives for a “visit”. Basically a walk through the ward and VK to see all his patients for up to a couple minutes each. We scuttle behind him and try to mumble out the patient’s information that we jotted down earlier. The doctor ignores most of this and asks us simple questions about the patient: “when was the last time hemoglobin was checked? how much is it?” - and usually we wouldn’t know the answer. 8 am: the doctor sits at the nurse station to write stuff in the medical records and the koas stand there waiting for questions. These questions tend to be more about theory and are quite difficult. 9 am: the doctor goes to the poly-clinic. Two of the koas who started their shift the day before follow him. I remain in the ward with one other koas. 10 am: we chat with the nurses and midwives about random things. 11 am: we walk down to the cafeteria and eat something. I buy some bottles of water. 12 noon: we try to nap in the koas room. there are two beds and it’s airconditioned.  1 pm: unable to sleep, I walk into the VK. I notice two women in labor. I sit down at the mini nurse station there and start chatting with the midwives. 1:30 pm: the midwives order me to do “DJJ” (fetal heart rate monitor) on all the patients. Now there’s four suddenly. 2 pm: Finished with the DJJ, I sit back down only for the resident doctor to walk in and ask me to set up the USG and wheel the patient in. 3 pm: My koas partner wakes up and walks into the VK. We sit together with the midwives, talking. 4 pm: One patient seems to be going into the active phase. The midwife orders me to do more DJJ. We start wondering who will assist with the delivery. 5 pm: Another patient is brought in. Suddenly the VK is full. 6 pm: Hungry. The cafeteria is way past closed. What to eat? I start flipping through the GoFood options when suddenly I hear loud noises from behind one of the separator curtains in the VK. I peer in and see that the midwife is already in position to help the patient deliver the baby. She looks at me and asks if I’m going to join or not. Of course I say yes and put gloves and apron on. I feel useless because the midwife is capable of doing everything herself and I’m just standing there watching. 7 pm: The baby is out and I take my gloves off. The gloves never really touched the baby. Instead, I was left to pull the placenta out. Boring. It’s all boring. And I’m quite hungry by now. Back to GoFood options. We walk to the ward’s large nurse station and sit down there, chatting with the midwives. It gets boring quickly. 8 pm: Food is on the way still. And we walk back to the VK. The midwife there tells us that a woman had already delivered while we were absent. We act surprised at how quick it was. A new patient is wheeled in. “God damn it, why do women have to give birth so much?” is written all over my face. I get told to do DJJ and take blood pressure. The GoFood has arrived at the lobby. I run down to get it. 9 pm: We finish eating in the koas room. I waste time on my laptop and my partner sleeps again. I wish I was good at falling asleep, but I’m not. 11 pm: I put my laptop away. I walk to the VK. 12 midnight: another woman starts giving birth. 1 am: the same lady is still giving birth. We all keep glancing at the clock because we know that the baby is stuck. The resident is woken up. I’m drowsy and want to sleep but of course, I can’t. I’m watching the midwives and the resident doctor try to encourage the woman. They start discussing the medications given to the woman. 2 am: the resident finally gives up and decides he will operate for SC (cesarean section). I’m ordered to follow the resident. 3 am: the operation finally begins. I get to help out a bit by holding the suction and passing some instruments to the doctor. I don’t feel sleepy but the core of my bones feel sore. 4 am: the operation ends. the resident is annoyed it took so long. there was bleeding. Small chat with the resident ensues and we walk back to the VK. 5 am: I lay down on the bed in the koas room. Exhausted. 6 am: My alarm rings and I walk over to the ward to go through the medical records again. 7 am: the doctor arrives for a “visit”. I’m wearing the same clothes as I did the last time (yesterday) when he came. He’s wearing fresh new clothes, hair still wet from his shower. 8 am: the doctor asks questions. 9 am: the two of us follow the doctor to the poly-clinic where we do anamnesis and watch how the doctor handles each patient. What was a sort of dull headache becomes a full fledged one: I’m trying to figure out if it’s due to low blood sugar levels or dehydration or because I only got like an hour of sleep. 12 Noon: the patients finally finish. The nurse makes small talk for a bit. We then walk upstairs towards the koas room. The midwives there make more small talk. 1 pm: My GoCar arrives. I feel lucky that the poly-clinic ended earlier than I hoped. 10 minutes later I arrive at home. I finally shower, shave, brush, and then eat (my maid’s cooking). 2 pm: My head touches the pillow and I fall asleep. 9 pm: I wake up. Most restaurants are closed. I can’t go out at this point. I guess I have to call GoFood again to order something from somewhere that’s open late. 10 pm: I eat and then wonder what to do. I can’t sleep again because I just woke up.  I try to work on the PowerPoint to present for my Refkas (case reflection) tomorrow. 2 am: I fall asleep anyways. 5 am: Wake up. And the whole process repeats again.

So, this happened for a total of three weeks in RSUD Sleman. Then, about two weeks ago, I was sent here to RSUD Pati for a total of four weeks. The shift is the same length but the content of the shift is different. Here in Pati, we can’t just relax that much. We’re expected to do a lot more deliveries (by mostly ourselves), suturing episiotomies and ruptures, filling in medical records, doing loads of little tasks such as taking blood, installing IVs, installing IV pumps, and of course studying. After Pati, RSUD Sleman looks like a holiday. 

It is midnight now. Tomorrow morning I have to be at the hospital for another day in hell. So I’m going to leave it there.

Hopefully I get time again to discuss Pati. It’s an interesting place with interesting hospital and I have a lot to say about it.