I've got 2 hours...

...until bedtime! I doubt I will really be in bed by 8pm, especially since I am contemplating going to the gym. But today was my first of 3 days starting IVs in the surgical admit unit. This starts at 5:45 am, which means I get up at 4:30 to be dressed, fed, caffinated, at the hospital, changed into scrubs and in the SAU by 5:45. After these 3 days, I'll have about another month's reprieve while everyone else in my group gets oriented, then it's once a week until this time next year. This is our program's way of making sure we get our minimum of 100 IV starts by the time we take boards. At least half of us are proficient in IVs, but a couple people worked in hospitals that had IV therapy teams, which means you don't ever start your own IVs. The juniors say they've gotten about 350 IVs this way over the past year. That doesn't count the IVs you start during your own OR cases, so we get plenty. The juniors are very anxious to hand this baton over to us for the next year.

I'm a weenie about losing sleep. I have to get my 8 hours, or at least 7, if I'm gonna manage. I do have fibromyalgia, which is entirely controlled if I take my medication and get enough sleep. I'm a chronic insomniac (a topic for another blog post someday) and the only real way to manage that is to have good "sleep hygeine" meaning you do whatever it takes to have a regular bedtime and get the correct (for me) amount of sleep. So I have just a couple hours to figure out how I'm going to spend the rest of my time before winding down for the night. I think I'll just go to the hospital and run there. I only did my arms yesterday at the Y (after my run) and planned on doing legs today. I don't usually split them up but I was feeling a little tired and crunched for time. But I can do legs tomorrow after class. It won't kill me.

I do have my new Timex heart rate monitor. It's pretty fun. I posted all that stuff about training and figuring out heart rates because I really want to know what is MY max heart rate. When I run I hit 176 regularly. I recover quickly, but with running it's hard to get my heart rate to stay lower. So I don't believe my training zone is as low as 130, but at the same time, the heart rate monitor will help me adjust in real time, rather than trying to grab the treadmill handles after I am done with my sprint and hope it actually reads my heart rate (sweaty hands, faulty equipment, etc...I know they aren't very accurate). So, let's go take this bad boy for a spin!