The Dumbening

When I was an undergrad and on the crew team, I used to wake up at 450 am to get to practice. I combined this pre-dawn awakening with a late bedtime because of my job. Needless to say, I was severely sleep deprived, and intimately familiar with the cognitive deficits caused by lack of sleep. I recall a severely impaired short-term memory, so much so that you could ask me to do something like vacuum, I would walk out of the room to get the vacuum, and in seconds not even be aware that I was supposed to be doing something. Besides impairing my ability to do household chores, my grades naturally suffered as well. Currently, on in-patient pediatrics, I have been sleeping less than I have in many years. Slowly I can see the onset of the memory deficits that plagued me a decade ago. As an undergrad I was pretty blasé about my grades, but now I need to learn information in order to apply it for the treatment of patients and my porous memory is not helping. It doesn't help that by the time I get home in the evening, I don't really feel like studying, even if I have the energy. I think that the impending shelf exam will change my motivation, however. I'll write about my first overnight call in my next post.

-SS