I fell asleep during surgery..and survived!

I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. I often find myself dozing off at inappropriate times without much control on my part. For example, during lecture with our chair of surgery while I'm on the surgery rotation - I fell asleep right in front of him. With an attendance of just 4 students, it's probably impossible to miss noticing the one student who's head keeps jerking forward and backward. But I digress - I had feared, prior to entering 3rd year clinical clerkships, that I would fall asleep especially during surgery with the long hours and early mornings.
Well, it finally happened today. I was at a simple partial mastectomy (aka lumpectomy) with sentinel node biopsy. For some unknown reason, I got incredibly sleepy halfway into the procedure. Trying to keep awake, I grabbed the vacuum and attempted to "suction the smoke" from the electrocautery. Instead, I started to drift off. I usually caught myself drifting off in time to wake back up and prevent anything bad from happening, but this time - I fell completely asleep at least once where my eyes closed and I actually started to fall in towards the patient. Luckily, I woke up and arrested my descent and the attending did not notice (or at least didn't say anything). So, I calmly placed the vacuum aspirator back onto the operating table and then tried valiantly to stay awake. I fell asleep once more, nearly completely, and thank god the surgery was over. Lessons learned:
1) Falling alseep in surgery is not the end of the world
2) Make sure you eat something before embarking on a long day of surgeries