Surviving Med School on No Sleep: My Messy, Caffeinated Journey

Hi there, lovely people who seem to have gotten less sleep this week than I have!

So if you happen to find yourself reading this text at around 2 AM, the eyes slightly puffy, being on perhaps your third cup of coffee, welcome to the club. We ought to have jackets made; who has the time, though?

#1.The Night That Broke the Camel’s Back

There I was last Tuesday, on the floor of my bathroom at 4:30 AM, seated wallowing in the presence of flashcards, tears streaming down into my cold ramen noodles; in four hours, an important clinical assessment awaited, and everything in my head felt like cotton.

It was at this moment that I really thought to myself: not sustainable. Not normal. And, contrary to whatever med school culture tells us, not something that should ever be accepted.

For three years, I’ve been thinking that exhaustion came with the package. You pay your tuition; it comes, with loss of sleep; maybe have a breakdown or two; and five years later, there you’d stand, proudly clad in the garb of a doctor. Simple enough!

It’s wrong. So wrong.

#2.“Just One More Chapter” — The Lie I Keep Telling Myself

“Just one more chapter before bed” is an all too familiar phrase often uttered around med school and one that I frequently employ. It’s midnight; if I’m lucky, I’ll have time to look over one more system before bed. The next thing I know, it’s 3 AM, and I’m somewhere down a social media rabbit hole, learning about obscure genetic disorders that probably won’t ever show up on an exam.

My roommate (bless her well-behaved heart) stuck a Post-it on my laptop that reads, “SLEEP > STUDY.” I laughed about it until I was forced to confront this embarrassing truth:

#3.My sleep-deprived brain is, quite frankly, useless

What about that time I studied for six hours straight, went to bed for three hours, and during rounds, could not tell the difference between Parkinson’s and Huntington’s? Well, my attending certainly remembers.

#4.What Sleep Deprivation Really Feels Like

For the poor souls who were not able to enjoy the privilege of med school, let me go ahead and paint the picture of what chronic sleep deprivation really feels like:

That bizarre floaty sensation as if you are watching yourself from a slightly higher vantage point behind your own body

-Putting your phone in the refrigerator and your yogurt in your backpack

-Cacking up at something, then wanting to cry two minutes later for no reason

-Reading the same paragraph five times and still being unable to make heads or tails of it

-That moment when a patient asks you an obvious question, and literally any thoughts in your head just buffer

#5.The “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” Cult

Can we talk about how it is so messed up that we brag about our sleeplessness? I’ve literally been in “Who’s sleeping less?” contests with classmates.

“I only got four hours last night.”

“Oh yeah? I haven’t slept more than three hours a night this week.”

“That’s nothing. I’ve been surviving on power naps and pure anxiety.”

We seem to say that with a morbid sense of pride; apparently, we think that the more we compromise our health, the better doctors we’ll be. Make it make sense!

#6.My Body Started Sending Warning Signals (That I Ignored)

My body’s been trying to tell me to slow down. Mulitple times. In increasingly obvious ways:

The eye-twitch from hell that lasted two weeks straight during an oncology rotation, which every single attending and fellow held in high regard.*

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According to me, it should have been a very good read. From my own experiences related to their learning and reflections, here’s what I think about it: And keep updated through the subscription to my Medium newsletter.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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