Transit

Hard night. Took me a long, exhausted time to make myself get up and trudge to bed. Once there, my body kept whiny "But I'm sooooo tired!"

"Yes, now go to sleep."

"But, I'm so tired. I want to go to bed!"

"Um, you're in bed, now go to sleep."

"But I'm sooooo tired….."

At which point I gave up, and in a while, kept awake by my own whining, I got up for a while. Came back to bed, and however beat up tired I felt, I could not drop off. Got up again, back to bed, finally went for a half benedryl since it was after midnight, and the next day was going to be a long haul. This worked, although I woke up at 0530. D already up put on a recorded book (The Truth, Terry Pratchett) for me, and I know I drifted off because I missed bits of the story, and dreamt.

I dreamed I was at work, or at least in an OR, as a patient woke from anesthesia. She startled awake, complaining of weird, and to her real, peculiarities, very upset and trying to get up and run away. I settled her back and told her "You're dreaming, relax." But she was still trying to get away, telling me more of the oddities of what her perceptions were, I assured her again. Then she tells me, "There were curtains on the floor!" I told her, "Sounds like a dream to me." Finally she seemed reassured enough to lie back. I can only remember the last one, but the other strange experiences of the patient were very clear in the dream.

Then we were cleaning the room for the end of the day, and found out we had another case added on. So, we set up, and the patient rolls in on a gurney. Older guy, very large, and I look at his paperwork. The consent is almost entirely defaced in blue ink. The signature is there, and at the top the usual "I (name) consent to the procedure below." I figure he's blued out the parts about allowing blood transfusion, use of images for teaching, all the details. But as I look closer, even the surgery is obscured with this intense mass of ink. It's a redacted consent. I'm a bit upset, because this is just not ok, and we are all set up and it's the end of the day. We have to send him back to get a new consent, since this is very far from legal, not to mention useless. We need to know what he's consented to.

At this point I woke up for good, and we were both ready more than an hour early, so we decided we had plenty of time to take the bus, and save cab fare. Lovely morning, and even with the bus running ten minutes late, we still got to the airport way too early. As is our wont. But we ate at a satellite of a local restaurant in the terminal - legally obligated to provide menu items at the same price as their main location. A bit early for beer, but hey, I wasn't going to be driving for hours, and it eased my anxiety a treat, on top of a very hearty breakfast. Should see us through. The in-flight free wifi is an example of getting what one pays for. Glitchy as hell, and ultimately, broken. So I took to just writing locally. As it were. Will post when I can connect. Preferably with photos.