Soundtrack Saturday: Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles

I'm coming up on the end of my second week on my nuclear pharmacy rotation. I've got 7 night shifts behind me and 6 more ahead of me, plus several very early days before this is all over. Every weekday since I've begun this adventure, I've seen the sun rise from my desk at the pharmacy. So I figured this classic song would be more than appropriate.

I've learned a couple things about myself in the past two weeks. 

1. I am still not a morning person

I've been waking up at 11pm to go to my night shifts, and somehow that is still better than my usual wake up time of 6am. I'm less tired, more alert, and I only need about half as much coffee as on a normally scheduled day. What's even more funny is that I find myself getting the same kind of tired at around 5:30-6am as I was when I was waking up at that time. 

2. Physical coordination does not always translate to manual dexterity

One of the challenging things about nuclear pharmacy in particular is the amount of manual labor involved. In a hospital, if you need to draw up a dose of a drug, you just grab a syringe and a vial and pull it up. Because nuclear deals with radioactivity, every thing we work with is lead shielded, and therefore rather heavy. I would consider myself to be fairly coordinated, but the amount of dexterity and hand strength required to manipulate a pound or two of lead had me fumbling all over the place. 

3. The "Do Not Disturb" setting on the iPhone is a beautiful invention

On days before I go to rotation for night shifts, I typically go to bed around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. As it turns out, I can go to sleep at just about any time, but staying asleep can be a challenge. Especially when everyone else I know is keeping normal hours. So every afternoon before I go to bed, I flip on the Do Not Disturb function on my phone. This keeps me from getting woken up by calls/texts/emails - no dings, no buzzing, no lighting up, nothing. When I wake up in the evening, I have a nice collection of communications waiting for me.

4. Breakfast food > all other food

As I mentioned before, I wake up at either 11pm or 4am depending on my shift. And when I wake up, I eat breakfast. Well, after I've been awake for several hours and start to get hungry again, it's still technically "morning" even though I'm on my second meal. So I eat more breakfast food. And then when I get off of rotation, the clock still says AM, so it's breakfast for dinner, too! I love me some breakfast food, so this has worked out pretty great. 

I've still got two more weeks of this lovely mess of a schedule. February is an easy month for me though, so there is some light (and a more normal sleep cycle) at the end of the tunnel.