For the four years that I was in med school I studied pretty much every minute I was awake. Plus the weather in Erie was awful and rarely was nice enough to do much outside. For the past year during my intern year I'd say I average 12 hours per day at work. Typically I get home around 7 or 7:30, eat dinner, take a small nap, and then by that time it is almost 9 o'clock. So I'm not used to having a lot of free time for hobbies. I usually spend my free time watching PTI and Attack of the Show and then playing a little PS3. And it isn't like I'm a huge gamer. I might play 30-45 minutes a day, and that is probably an overestimate. I haven't been on the PS3 in about 3 weeks since the Playstation Network went down.
As spring progresses into summer, the days are getting longer and the weather nicer (when it isn't raining). With my last rotation and now my current rotation I have awesome hours. I am getting home with hours of daylight, which is something I am not used to at all. Because of this, I am sitting around with lots of free time and thinking to myself that I should have more hobbies. I think one of the main reasons why I don't do a lot outside of work is because I am simply not used to having the time. I don't have a 9-5 job like most of America so to have this extra time is a bit unique. And truthfully, I am a little hesitant to jump into some hobbies at this time because I know next month I will be right back in the grind working crazy hours and being tired again. I am doing obstetrics and delivering babies next month. I enjoy this aspect of medicine and thus will probably be willing to put in extra hours. Plus I'm working at a different hospital which is about an hour away from my home so there is long commute times.
Possibly when I finish residency I might have more of a normal work schedule. If so, I think a couple of hobbies I'd like to pick up are biking and tennis. I wouldn't do either competitively or seriously. One of my attending doctors has like a $3,000 bicycle that he takes to the mountains of France and rides the Tour de France route. I am not interested in doing anything like this. I'd just have a simple bike to ride around town. Same for tennis - nothing fancy, just something for recreation. Plus these are activities Sarah and I can do together, though Sarah is terrified of bikes.
I got home from work today by 2 pm. It isn't that my doctor is lazy. He is efficient. We saw somewhere between 20-30 patients today before noon. He has an amazing system in place for seeing patients. Anyway I stayed busy for about an hour washing my car. The weather in the metro Indy area today is beautiful, though I took my car to Mike's Car Wash. It does a decent job of washing the car, especially if you manually dry it off when it's finished so you don't get water streaks. Then I cleaned the inside of the car myself. Sometimes I hand wash my car, depending on my mood and the weather. My favorite part of washing my car at Mike's is the tire cleaner. It does a great job of cleaning the tires and making them look bright black. I think having bright tires and clean rims makes worlds of difference in making your car look nice. Otherwise I spent the rest of my day doing the typical. Watching PTI and Attack of the Show. I'm also watching a little NBA and NHL playoffs.
Isn't Orthopedic Surgery planned well in advance? I would think that your doctor should be able to make his schedule work like that. How long should a hip replacement last?
ReplyDeleteThe surgeries aren't always planned. Many hip replacements aren't planned and result from fractures.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't know how long a typical hip replacement should last. Probably depends on the type of prosthesis they use.