The Life Of A Medical Student.

4:00 am comes round the horizon way too fast…aka -Monday Morning

Jolt awake to an annoying ring on my phone. Look at the time,

4:30am: entirely to early for any human being to be up. Hit snooze

4:37am: OK 5 more minutes. Snooze

4:41am: 5 more and I’ll forgo brushing my teeth. Snooze

4:46am: brushing my your hair. Snooze

4:47am: getting dressed. Off

5:00am: damn it… overslept, hit off instead of snooze. Rush to throw on any nearby clothing. Get dressed, grab bag and run for train. Along the sprint, curse life, shoes, the MTA and the solar system for making it only a 24 hour day.

Get to train station and realize I left my Metro card at home, in my wallet with my money and credit cards next to my glasses. Contemplate sneaking on train via the patented turnstile jump. Realize that this early in the am the coordination to avoid the turnstile and not sustain a life threatening injury is too great a requirement. Scrabble together change from every orifice, beg the homeless guy for the last quarter needed in exchange for my socks.

Purchase the card run for the train…miss train.

Anxiously await the next train, sustain whiplash from craning neck to check the tunnel every 24 sec.

Get on train, feel a little rumble in the tummy, ignore the rumble fall asleep and wake up to realize the rumble has become a full blown storm. Sprint to the nearest bathroom in the hospital grab a newspaper as I run, lets face it you never know.

Run into a stall and thank the lucky stars I made it. As I sit there contemplating life I realize that; A. I wore different color socks B. I wore yesterdays scrubs C. my day old scrubs are sitting in a pool of someone else’s urine. Vomit a little at the thought. Realize there is nothing left to do but finish the Sudoku currently imprinted on my ass from the newspaper I lay down on to avoid sitting in someone else’s urine to begin with. On the bright side proceed to finish the Sudoku on my right cheek in record time. The crossword took a little longer.

5:00pm can’t come soon enough

After sleepwalking my way through the morning, being ignored by residents, scoffed at by attendings and generally relegated to a species that equivalent to a dung beetle by the lunch lady (who by the way added my $1.30 coke, $.83 orange and $.50 chips to the nice round sum of $6.00). Get a bit of good news dismissal is half hour early. Hey any ray of sun will do.

Go to station heading for Queens, hear a train coming, get excited and run for it. Make the subway just as the doors close… breath a sigh of relief. Fall asleep before train so much as starts moving. Wake up on 81st in Manhattan; curse my luck because the switch to the F train was to happen at 42^nd st, three stops earlier. Crap. Get out and transfer to downtown B, head to 42^nd st. Get excited as the train comes into the station, because there is an F train on the opposite side. Hobble on with glee. At 34th Street (2 stops later), realize I am an idiot. This is the downtown F. Get out. Transfer to uptown F. Fall asleep before train starts moving. Wake up at 179th Street [in Queens]. Take the F downtown again, to my stop… 1 station back."

Finally get through the home door, 1 hour later then I normally would. Drop on the bed. 30 minutes later regain the ability to move. Take off my jacket and shoes grab a piece of turkey and the required textbook and settle down in bed to study. 13 minutes later fall asleep on top of piece of turkey and book.

Lurch awake with something sticky attached to my face at 4:30am. The alarm doesn’t sound any better on Tuesday

OK 10 more minutes… I am already dressed and I wont brush my hair.