Evening Shifts I just got off from two evening shifts. These are 4 to midnight shifts. An evening shift at the hospital is different from days because you never know what you will be doing. You take over a room that has run longer than expected or you do an add on/emergency case. Some days it can be a light shift. Yesterday I took over a case that finally finished at 7:00 pm. After that there were no other cases to do so I sat around and read a book and watched TV. Tonight was different. I ended up doing three cases finishing the last at about 11:00. One case was very sad. A 39 year old man who was in prison had some kind of seizure 3 months ago and quit breathing. He was resuscitated but not in time to prevent brain damage. He has been in a vegetative state for the last three months and will never recover. He has no family to make decisions for him and he had no form of living will. He has been made a ward of the state. Today we put in a abdominal feeding tube. He can now be transferred to a long term nursing facility where he will be cared for potentially for years to come. I did another case of a fifteen year old who wrecked a motorcycle and damaged his knee. Both of his parents were there at the start as I got a history of the young man before starting his case. I did not ask for the details of the motorcycle crash but from the dirty looks mom was giving dad I think dad let the boy ride the motorcycle without the mom knowing about it. I think he is in big trouble! Fortunately the boy should fully recover though he will have some good road rash scars on his knee and hands.