Anesthesia on-call

Last night was my second on-call shift for Anesthesia. Here's my schedule for the last 2 days:

Monday:

6:15 am: Wake up
6:45 am: Leave for school
7:00 am: Formulate anesthetic plan for my first patient of the day (a young German shepherd requiring heavy sedation for dental x-rays); set up for the case
8:00 am: Rounds
9:00 am: Sedate said German shepherd for his procedure
10:00 am: A little VetPrep in preparation for upcoming NAVLE
11:30 am: Head to CCU to formulate anesthetic plan for my second patient of the day (young male Chihuahua with urethral stones, headed for a cystourethrogram with possible cystotomy to follow, and castration)
1:00 pm: Anesthetize said Chihuahua
4:45 pm: Following cystourethrogram, cystotomy, and castration, pass Chihuahua off to a rotation-mate for recovery; step out of surgery for a brief break and a bite to eat
5:00 pm: On-call time officially begins! Head straight into an abdominal explore for a hemoabdomen due to a bleeding splenic mass in a middle-aged golden retriever
7:00 pm: Euthanize golden retriever intra-op at owner's request due to gross evidence of metastatic cancer in the abdomen
7:15 pm: Anesthetize elderly beagle for an abdominal explore for a hemoabdomen due to a bleeding splenic mass (sounds familiar, eh?)
9:00 pm: Euthanize beagle intra-op at owner's request due to gross evidence of metastatic cancer in the abdomen (familiar again)
9:30 pm: Arrive home
10:30 pm: Fall asleep

Tuesday:

1:45 am: Awakened by manic techno ringtone by the overnight intern calling me in to anesthetize an Australian shepherd with pyometra
2:00 am: Arrive at school and formulate anesthetic plan
2:30 am: Anesthetize said Aussie
4:30 am: End of surgery; recover Aussie (slowly) in CCU
5:15 am: Arrive home
5:45 am: Give up trying to fall asleep; eat a PB&J sandwich; watch an episode of "House"
6:45 am: Leave for school
7:00 am: Formulate anesthetic plan for young Toy Poodle requiring upper GI endoscopy and colonoscopy
8:00 am: Rounds
9:00 am: Poodle is expected to be ready to go around noon; time for more VetPrep
10:15 am: Poodle has been pushed back to late afternoon because he hasn't yet had sufficient enemas (poor guy); get permission from supervising anesthesiologist to go home and sleep for awhile
11:00 am: Asleep!
2:00 pm: Awakened by annoying alarm clock; have a little lunch (breakfast? dinner?)
2:45 pm: Arrive back at school; learn that Poodle's procedure has been pushed back to tomorrow
3:00 pm: Take over anesthetic monitoring of a canine thyroid mass resection from a rotation-mate who was at school all night as well (though he was admittedly here by choice, as a paid surgery technician)
5:30 pm: Recover thyroid mass dog in CCU; formulate anesthetic plan for my second patient for tomorrow (Dachshund needing a dental and skin mass removal)
6:00 pm: Leave school, again (this routine is getting old); swing by Culver's for a proper dinner of cheeseburger and fries, followed by some brain deactivation time (watched an episode of "Pan Am" on Hulu), then house cleaning
9:30 pm: Gearing up to go to bed; might get 8 hours tonight!

As a junior I remember overhearing the then-seniors talking about their schedules, hours put in during evenings and weekends, plus on-call shifts, and wondering how they did it. The answer I've learned is, you just do it. There's not really much of a choice, anyhow, and you can only hope that when you spend all night at school during an on-call shift, the heads of your rotation are merciful enough to let you take a couple hours for a nap or send you home early. I'm not envious of whoever's on-call for anesthesia tonight because there were several surgeries already lined up when I left this evening, and we have 19 anesthetics scheduled for tomorrow (there are typically 9-12 procedures a day, with 9 students) -- yeesh!