back in the NICU

In September, I had the hardest month of my intern year because I was working in the NICU (=neonatal intensive care unit). I'm back for my second month there now... which might explain my long absences. I'm keeping track of my hours again. This past week, I only worked 71.5 hours, which is pretty good! Better than my personal record last time of 94 hours in a week.

Everyone tried to be encouraging and said that the second month in the NICU is "SO MUCH BETTER." Well. I'm still waiting for it be better. It's better in the sense that I sort of know what I'm doing now, but not really. It's also worse now because instead of just being overwhelmed and hating the fact that I'm overwhelmed. Now, I'm just hating the fact that I have to work there.

Despite that, I'm also trying to have a postive attitude. I had a great call night last week. I got a chance to actually lie down at around 12:30am, even though I kept getting paged all night long and had to get up a couple hours later to make sure a baby wasn't going to die on me. Still, it was a great call night and I wouldn't complain half as much if all my call nights this month went like that. :) (Doubt it... but one can hope).

Last night, I went to see Zodiac, after having dinner at this great little Vietnamese restaurant on Argyle St. Zodiac was scary and intense and really really captivating. Plus, Jake Gyllenhaal is beautiful.