Thirty-five years sleep deprived and I lived to tell about it
Have you ever done something so stupid that later you had to just sit and shake your head? Well today after watching the new television show, The Doctors, which has condensed but often good medical subjects, I was left shaking my head and going Oh My God!
I worked thirty-five years on the 1100 to 0730 shift, full time, while trying for all the over time I could get. So a shift would often be 1100 pm to 330 pm the following day. I would sometime leave work at 330 pm to return at 1100 that night. So to say I was sleep deprived is like saying Denzel Washington is handsome. That goes without saying.
During the early seventies my husband was in Vietnam. It was not unusual for me to return to work on three or three and one half hours of sleep. Because I still had to be mom to my two kids. I can remember one night finishing the routine work and was talking with my nursing assistant. She said the phone rang, I answered correctly, talked with the person, hang up, and stared at her. The next thing I remembered was her asking if we were getting a patient. What are you talking about I asked? I had to call the ER to get a clarification about what was going on. I was sound asleep but functioning correctly.
How does this tie in with the TV show? They had two students that had been up 30 hours without sleep or caffeine. They tested their reflexes, motor skills, and memory. They failed the entire test! Can you imagine what I was really like? I didn’t then or now, drink caffeine except in diet sodas. So that left me without any boost to my mental facilties.The doctors did say you may get a boost from caffeine, but it doesn’t help the problem of being sleep deprived.
Would you believe I only had one car accident in all that time and that was because someone rear ended me? That does not say that I wasn’t lucky and really blessed. There was an angel sitting on my shoulder all those many years. How I worked that shift for so many years I don’t know. I do know that after four years of being retired, I still have problems sleeping. No one should be allowed to work that many years on the night shift.
April 26th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Yes, you were certainly lucky. I worked graveyard shift for about a year. I had one accident as a direct result, and consider myself lucky because I also had a few near misses.
April 27th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Nightshift work is hard. And its effect is so long lasting that the many health problems I have are a direct result from working so long on the night shift. You would think the employers would think enough of the nurses to not let them ruin their health but no its about filling a shift nobody else wants to work.