sleep as a medical trainee

I started writing posts as drafts over the course of several days because I don't have time to stop everything and write a full entry.

This is probably my first post that doesn't deal with me being depressed.  But extreme fatigue just makes it worse.

People can tell you to do yoga and knit sweaters or whatever non-sense to bring "balance" to your life but don't listen to them.  Real life isn't rainbows and work life balance.

Sleep as much as you can, whenever you have time.  not all rest is equal, however.

The types of rest:

Quality rest:
8+ hours of sleeping in your bed.  Uninterrupted sleep in a comfortable environment.  Doesn't happen for me.  I usually sleep 5 hours or less at night or during the day at home. 

Weak supplemental rest:  10+ minute naps.  Not an option at work.  I don't get to lay down at work and I'm too busy to rest my head.  Probably more of an attainable goal for me at home.  I feel more rested with naps  at home than I do from coffee.

Effective supplemental rest: The 2-3 hour naps you take when you get home that your body has needed to catch up.  I wonder what that's like.

Dangerous "rest":  Nodding off at work, driving, whenever.  This is where you don't want to be.  This means you have to make a change to either drink caffeine (a crushing cycle with dependence) or be better about rest. 

You need to think about your sleep in terms of debt. 

You're exhausted after 24+ hours of stressful clinical work, administrative work, getting yelled at, being dehydrated and hungry, answering pages for things that were a problem hours ago but no one told you about, anxiety from whatever, then you get to go home and have stress and anxiety about the next time you set foot in the hospital. 

I've fallen asleep on the couch at home, the floor, an office chair, and the bathtub so far.  As a trainee, we take more call than our supervisors and that sort of wears you out a little more when a member of your team is always more rested than you.  So much of getting through my days is mental effort to overcome the physical exhaustion.  And then I need to find that mental and psychological strength which is its own task.