I have spent the summer trying to avoid working, a noble endeavour. However, in 34 years of medicine I have never before been as successful in work avoidance as I have been this summer. Most people would assume that the reason is that I am becoming smarter (or sneakier) with advancing age; after all, doctors are like wine, they improve with age (or so I like to believe).
For much of the summer, medicine was the farthest thing from my mind. I was visiting my daughter and her family on the west coast, and playing with my twin grandchildren was at the top of my mind. My wife and I did take a few days to travel in southern British Columbia and visited Whistler and the Sunshine coast. The proprietor of the Bed and Breakfast we stayed in on the Sunshine coast had a mother-in-law in Vancouver who was not in great health. She complained about the difficulty in accessing home care in BC, and the limited hours available. It sounded just like Ontario.
Most year end reviews come at the end of December. At that time I was working full speed as an attending physician on our hospital’s general medical service and never saw the light of day. Immediately afterwards, I took over an extremely busy geriatric consult service. However, I am now back from two weeks of rest and recuperation in the sun and once again capable of stringing words together.
November 6, 2011
As is my usual pattern, this December I am attending on a general internal medicine unit rather than my usual geriatric service. Usually there is scant difference in the age distributions of the two services, but this year our general medical service has admitted mostly young or very young patients. I use the standard definitions of young and very young: very young means younger than me, young means less than 10 years older than me (note: my oldest son disputes these definitions and even has the nerve to call me old!).