For the first time, I was the one called in in the middle of the night for a case. On one hand, it threw off my schedule a lot more than I’d expected. I’ve always told myself that getting up at night would be ok, because there’s such an adrenalin rush in the OR that I would wake up and be fine. We were partway through the case before I felt anything like that. I guess the excitement was more associated with novelty than I realized, and now that scrubbing on a case as the primary resident is becoming more routine, I can’t count on that energy for the middle of the night.

On the other hand, I feel like more of a surgeon than I ever have before, and it’s wonderful. A lot of it is due to the great attending I’ve been working with. He lets the resident, even as junior as me, have the surgeon’s side of the table, and make a lot of small decisions about how to proceed next. He doesn’t criticize the whole time, which makes it so much easier to work; I know he’ll only say something when he really means it. He makes me really a part of the case – dissecting difficult spots, making some decisions about sizing the vascular anastomoses, sewing the anastomoses, and tying important knots in deep corners. (The ones that I have too much of a tendency to break. . . but not last night.) I think I’m actually becoming slightly competent at some of this; not quite second nature yet, but it will be soon. I can start to think about the whole course of the operation, and the strategy, rather than having to concentrate completely on just how to hold my hand next.

So what if the price is losing a night’s sleep. . . it’s worth it.

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