Now I understand what it means to be a doctor, to have only 2 to 3 hours of sleep a day.
Here’s the story. I got my night shift, and then I did it. The next morning, I wasn’t fully awake. I felt so bad. I couldn’t focus on people talking to me. And right after I got home, I literally landed on the couch and fell asleep. It wasn’t short. It was over 10 hours. And the day after, I regretted it, for not doing my things that have to be done, for spending too much time on sleeping (while actually it was hard to wake me up at that time). Then I asked myself, would it be like this, all the time? Getting a night shift and revenge on the next day? Lack of sleep one day and excessive sleeping the next day? How if I got a ‘ding-dong’, one day of night shift, and also the day after tomorrow?
Now the moral of the story is, that we have only one day. If that one day we lack of sleep, just sleep but only on that day. We don’t have ‘tomorrow’ to pay back, to fulfill our need of sleep. Because we always have things to do.
Now say that we sleep 6 hours a day. And if we have a night shift, that means we will be sleeping 1 hour at most, in the night. So during the day, we need to sleep 5 hours. But that’s pretty risky, especially for moslem like me, we can’t just ignore salat. So just add 1 or 2 hours on the day. That makes it 2 to 3 hours of sleep. And that should be enough! Well, that’s what I believe.
Everyone has his/her own biological clock. It says how many hours we need for a sleep. It also says when to sleep, when to wake up, when to eat, etc. We practically sleep and wake up almost at the same time everyday.
Well, that doesn’t count for doctors. We are exceptions. We can adjust. We can sleep for 6 hours a day, but also we can sleep for only 2 hours a day.
That’s what I believe about being a doctor, 2 to 3 hours of sleep a day won’t kill you.
