Quoted: Quoted: Thats hilarious.  My GF said the samething.  She is a nurse so she found it very entertaining.  So wrote down what I was ordering and was responding to me in my sleep.  It sounded like I was doing a delivery and there was some bleeding.  She was impressed that all the orders were correct.   I wouldn't be surprised if this is very common.  Mrs sleepdr did the same thing.  Apparently I was treating someone in the ICU with a heart attack & congestive heart failure - complete with beta blockers and diuretics down to the doses.

If I had that patient, my first and final order would be, consult sleepdr!  Even in my sleep I would have got that right.

I fell asleep at the wheel once. Had to work alot of hours for a few weeks in a row, and while driving home late one night while it was raining I guess the windshield wipers helped to put me to sleep, kinda like a hypnotist waving a watch in your face. Anyway, I woke up in the grassy area between the north and south lanes, sliding sideways. Fortunately the cruise control was on, so when I corrected the steering the car kept pulling me up the slight incline away from the trees, in a somewhat controled power slide at 70mph. It scared the crap out of me, so I drove home the rest of the way Ace Ventura style to stay awake,  with my head out the window and rain hitting me in the face.

yes

when you feel the snooze hitting you--PULL OVER!

this is personal experience: i worked a 11hr shift, had been awake for over 19 hours and decied to head back to my college town for school the next morning(3 hr drive)

hit cruise control, was 2 hrs in the drive, had just pulled over and took a short nap for ~20 mins, but the damn sun was in my eyes and i started to squint....

next thing i know i'm doing 70 on the left shoulder and into the median...
luckily the medians around here are a couple of lanes wide and i walked away w/ no injuries--just needed a tow truck b/c my 2 front tires were blown

lessons learned:
--SLEEP; dont drive while sleepy
--thank god for good sameritans
--dont use cruise control while dozing
--pull over and catch more sleep
--dont drive into the sun
--AC, radio, and caffein are ok substitutes, but SLEEP is what is needed
--1 spare tire is not enough

Quoted: Quoted: I am not even going to read the rest of this thread..... I am ASSuming you are a reasonbly smart fella, I mean you are studying/ studied medicine. HOW CAN YOU BE SO INTELLIGENT AND SO FUCKING STUPID AT THE SAME TIME? You .......ahhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggg never-fucking-mind!!!!!!!!! Umm, yeah.  Ever been a resident?  Not exactly the easiest life in the world, and you spend upwards of 90% of your time in survival mode.  I'm sure you've never done anything of questionable judgement before, of course. When you work up to 120 hours a week consistently, doing 36+ hours awake at a time, sleep deprivation WILL affect your thought processes.  Add on to the sleep deprivation the massive knowledge base you are trying to study, as well as challenging new skills in an adversarial and confrontational environment.  By the way, everyone's waiting for you to make a mistake and sue you/kick you out of the program/publicly humiliate you.  That's if you're fortunate enough NOT to have had one or more people die in front of your eyes. There were times I was so tired, my wife told me I was talking in my sleep - giving medicine orders.   My soapbox is bigger than yours. No offense intended of course, but I think your post was a little too critical.

<------------------ is a truck driver , no need to get into who works longer or harder.... Mute point!

I have driven cross country in 2 days yes 48-50 hrs! 2 hour naps a day, turned around and came home, do the math!

SO yeah,  I have all right to be "critical", my job is driving. One fuck up from you guys and I can be hauled off to PRISON for something I did 5 months ago. ( ie such as forgot to log a 5 min. break, or similar....) so PLEASE PEOPLE driving is THE most dangerous thing MOST of you will ever do. KEEP THAT IN MIND.

Ever seen what a car looks like when it crashes going 90 mph?????

check this out...
Guy (trucker)  was waiting at a stoplight. Intern/ resident in NJ on his way home after a long 3 day shift. Fell asleep at the wheel and rear ended the rig at approx. 53 mph. He went right back to the Hospitol he worked at, all banged up. guess where the trucker ended up at in less than 3 hours? JAIL, why? He was 20 min AHEAD of his logbook, 20 fucking minutes, hell he coulda taken a short cut or ran 2 mph OVER the speed limit for 5 hours and done that. He got 90 days in jail (suspended for probation), 3800 bux in fines, and lost his job, all for what?

Did the Intern get into any trouble? NOT A FUCKING LICK!!

Nice to learn the harshness of the real world huh?

The most tired I have ever driven...

I was convoying around NTC (Ft Irwin) for several hours at night (blackout with PVS-5s)and I started thinking the tumbleweeds were little trolls or gnomes or some such shit.  I realized what it was and made a game out of runing them down in my humvee.  I thought the cammo netting on the vehicle in front of me was someone hanging off the top.

I kept whacking my gunner's leg to ask what it all was but he was sound asleep.  I couldn't go to sleep because everytime I nodded off the weight of my hlemet and the nods would snap me awake.

Quoted: <------------------ is a truck driver , no need to get into who works longer or harder.... Mute point! I have driven cross country in 2 days yes 48-50 hrs! 2 hour naps a day, turned around and came home, do the meth!

Fixed it for you!  

Quoted: Years ago, one of my cousins fell asleep while operating his 1340cc Harley.  Luckily he wasn't killed. --VT

I did that a couple of months ago riding into Las Cruces.  That scared the shit out of me, woke up on an overpass and realised I should be dead.

Just trying to keep a friendly discussion here; I took offense to the name-calling.

Quoted: <------------------ is a truck driver , no need to get into who works longer or harder.... Mute Moot point! No argument that you work long and hard; it's something few people have the stamina to do. I have driven cross country in 2 days yes 48-50 hrs! 2 hour naps a day, turned around and came home, do the math! I've also done a cross country in 50hrs. SO yeah,  I have all right to be "critical", my job is driving. One fuck up from you guys and I can be hauled off to PRISON for something I did 5 months ago. ( ie such as forgot to log a 5 min. break, or similar....) so PLEASE PEOPLE driving is THE most dangerous thing MOST of you will ever do. KEEP THAT IN MIND. If your anesthesiologist falls asleep, you probably won't wake up.  I'd call that fairly critical, too.  Agreed that driving is much more dangerous than most people realize, even the most risky part of an average person's daily activitis.  Way too many drivers on the road are way too cavalier about it, not realizing the amount of energy their little speeding car has generated. Ever seen what a car looks like when it crashes going 90 mph????? Yes.  I've even seen what the occupants look like.  Check out some other threads I've posted, and you'll see me ranting about people driving without respect to the danger involved. check this out... Guy (trucker)  was waiting at a stoplight. Intern/ resident in NJ on his way home after a long 3 day shift. Fell asleep at the wheel and rear ended the rig at approx. 53 mph. He went right back to the Hospitol he worked at, all banged up. guess where the trucker ended up at in less than 3 hours? JAIL, why? He was 20 min AHEAD of his logbook, 20 fucking minutes, hell he coulda taken a short cut or ran 2 mph OVER the speed limit for 5 hours and done that. He got 90 days in jail (suspended for probation), 3800 bux in fines, and lost his job, all for what? That's injustice, yes.  The intern was clearly driving impaired. Did the Intern get into any trouble? NOT A FUCKING LICK!! Again, that's injustice. Nice to learn the harshness of the real world huh? I've seen the harshess of the real world, thank you.   I've picked up children with half their face missing after coming upon car accidents where they were ejected after the SUV rolled over.   I've kept a man alive long enough to make it to the ICU, simply so his wife didn't have to have her husband and daughter both die in the operating room.  I used EVERY SINGLE PREMIXED LIFESAVING MEDICATION AVAILABLE, until we had to mix it by hand after using up the available stock.  I was the last person to look into his eyes, and the first to look into his wife's. I am at work right now, and just took care of a 14 year old boy.  His family donated his organs after he was thrown from the back of a pickup. Yes, I have already learned the harshness of the real world even before you decided to educate me on my shortcomings.

Please, let's just be civil here.  I know your job is hard, but please don't call physicians idiots for being very tired and making poor judgements during their years of training.  It is a unique kind of hell that I would not wish on anyone, and there is more to it than mere sleep deprivation.  You log more miles in a month than many will rack up in 2 years.  It is your livelihood and is put at risk by stupid mistakes that other drivers make.  Both are stressful occupations with high stakes and very low tolerance for errors.

By the way, penalties for not logging information are not unique to trucking.  If you don't chart a medication, examination, or even get the times wrong on a surgery start, you can be held liable.  If something bad happens, there's a good chance that poor documentation will be the reason you lose a court case.  Criminal penalties for Medicare fraud are very stiff, and a conviction will prevent you from obtaining a medical license.  Even being charged with fraud must be reported, and may be grounds for denial of licenses.  12-15 years of education, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, nothing to show for it but bankruptcy and a criminal record.  That's pretty harsh and "real world" too.

I have sleep apnea, so quite often I don't get anywhere near amount of sleep I'd prefer.  If I have to drive, I can quite easily get road-hypnotized and find myself nodding off at the wheel.

Fuckin' SCARY when that happens.  

If I can't get a grip on it, I'll find a place to pull over.  Once I STOP, of course, I can't go to sleep, but I'll set the alarm on my watch for 15 minutes and kick back and close my eyes.  I'm usually OK for a couple of hours after that.

Not that I'm trying to get all fuzzy and touchy-feely... but I had the same problem driving home EVERY DAY from my night job... then I came across a Web site called Wendi.com... she's a hypnotherapist... she has a CD that helps me take a 5, 10 or 20 minute nap... wake up feeling like I have had 8 hours! Works pretty well, I recommend her.

Quoted: Not that I'm trying to get all fuzzy and touchy-feely... but I had the same problem driving home EVERY DAY from my night job... then I came across a Web site called Wendi.com... she's a hypnotherapist... she has a CD that helps me take a 5, 10 or 20 minute nap... wake up feeling like I have had 8 hours! Works pretty well, I recommend her.

She's the one that advertizes on XM Radio, right?  I always wondered how her "powernaps" worked.  She also has a website like iamsolazy.com or something.

Fell asleep on my motorcycle.  I don't know what or who was driving but I woke up before the toll booth when I went over the vibrating strips.  I had such and adrenaline rush after that I couldn't sleep when I got home.

I think I have a small case of narcalepsey [sp?]  I will be driving for a while and get sleepy and pull over, sleep for a few minutes and be good to go a few more hundred miles.

I cant sleep at work.

I never meant to offend , my appologies .

I see we are on the same boat, maybe we can get the reat of the yahoo's in line.

I dont mind hard work, I do this for the "thrill of death" but the civil suits and over zealous LEO's are getting rediculous. Unappreciative public, frowns upon my profession, not realizing the impact we could have on this country if we stopped and went home, as im YOUR case too.

that is all carry on with your regularly schedueld bashing and flaming

I can almost guarantee that after having dinner in San Diego, by the time we get to Oceanside I am close to nodding off and we stop at that rest area, ans I snooze for about 20 minutes and then I am good to go.

Driving home from Santa Maria the other dayI was snapping out of snoozing in so stopped in Carpinteria, got a coke and walked about 5 minutes and I was wired for about 2 hours.

I've just had to adjust to the fact that if I don't get me off the road on purpose and taking a break, I'll be in trouble and sleeping.

If I pace myself, drink a diet coke or two and some munchies I can go almost forever with regular  potty stops, that ole diuretic caffeine does it every time.  And that brief stop to walk to the head, check a few things out is more than enough to recharge.  So I can overcome it with the right routine, if I try by plain willpower I can't.

Nope.  Good thing is, I DO NOT fall asleep when driving.  

Recently, I drove from Austin, TX to Abingdon VA (1200 miles).  I left Austin at 8pm CST.  Made it to Abingdon around 2pm EST the next day.  Seeing the sun come up in Tennessee was nice... the fog in the trees was cool.  

A few years ago, I drove from Austin to Phoenix (1000 miles) overnight, too.  Got a little tired around El Paso, but once the sun was coming up, I caught my second wind.  

I do get TIRED, but won't fall asleep.  I also can't really sleep if I'm riding in a car on a trip.  

Quoted: I never meant to offend , my appologies . I see we are on the same boat, maybe we can get the reat of the yahoo's in line. I dont mind hard work, I do this for the "thrill of death" but the civil suits and over zealous LEO's are getting rediculous. Unappreciative public, frowns upon my profession, not realizing the impact we could have on this country if we stopped and went home, as im YOUR case too. that is all carry on with your regularly schedueld bashing and flaming

No harm no foul; sorry if I came across too strongly.  I agree we were saying the same things, just different ways.

Let me buy you an ARFCom drink: