Are you a really really sound sleeper? Please tell your doctor/paranoid 3rd year medical student!

Today was a semi-stressful day in the hospital. I had a patient with lots of fairly serious chronic medical issues who was in the hospital to treat some infections and acute medical problems. All-in-all he was a pretty sick guy the day before his blood pressure kept fluctuating sending flurries of anxiety through our medical team. However, today he induced new levels of stress in my slightly-paranoid 3rd year medical student-ness when I went in to check on him this morning and he was unarousable. I kid you not - this man was dead to the world, in fact he seemed to be in some sort of coma-like state. I tried shouting, shaking his shoulders, a sternal rub (a maneuver to cause somnolent individuals to wake up by painfully rubbing their chest bone), but my patient would not wake out of his slumber. He had not received any sleep or pain medications that could make him more sleepy, and he seemed to be working harder to breath. When we rounded on my patient later, my anxiety over my patient's sleepy state seemed to infect the rest of the team and my attending doctor told me to call the patient's decision maker for health care to clarify whether or not the patient would want to be placed on a respirator if he became more ill. I made the call and put in some more orders. I kept checking on my patient throughout the morning and was disturbed to find him as unresponsive as ever. As I left for a teaching conference I passed by his bed and gave him another anxious look and several "Please don't die" wishes/prayers/jujus/brain waves. After my conference I went straight to his room to check on him. From the hallway I was surprised to hear cheerful voices and laughing coming from his room. Upon entering I found my patient sitting up, breathing normally and chatting happily with a nurse who had come to visit him. He looked as healthy as ever cracking jokes and he and the nurse were laughing up a storm. I was about to cry foul and ask just what was going on - had someone injected my patient with superman juice while I was gone???!?!?? Just then, his family members come in, worried because I had called earlier asking about the respirator, and told me that he is a really, really, really sound sleeper and that once he goes to sleep they can never wake him up at home either. So word to the wise - if you are a very sound sleeper and ever end up in the hospital, tell the paranoid 3rd year medical student taking care of you and save him/her from getting a few more white hairs and stress wrinkles.


Yup, the picture pretty much says it all.