I retired from fulltime medical practice earlier this year. My intention was to relax, travel, and then return to part-time practice. I enjoy the practice of medicine and I think it’s too early in life to give it up completely. So I registered with a locum tenens agency and was hired back by my former medical group to do fill-in work. And then—before I could get back to work—I became a patient.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I needed an entirely unexpected coronary bypass surgery. I made the diagnosis of coronary artery disease myself while on a four-mile run in the hills near my home. Fortunately, the surgery went well and today—ten weeks post surgery—I’m just about back to baseline. I’ve started bicycling and running on a treadmill, and I feel fine. That funny little burning sensation along the margin of my breastbone—the symptom that tipped me off that something might be wrong—has disappeared even when I exercise vigorously for 40 minutes.

So, yesterday, I got back in the saddle and filled-in for a doctor who was out on sick leave. The night before I was as nervous as an intern on his first ward assignment. I was coming back after the longest period away from medical practice I’d ever experienced since graduating from med school.

The good news is that it was something like the proverbial “riding a bicycle”: the moves of clinical medicine came back right away. The hardest part was navigating the new clinical information system that had been installed since my retirement. And the most interesting case was that of a young man whose presenting complaint was given as “snake bite”. Turns out his pet python (not a poisonous snake) had chomped down on one of his fingers. Fortunately nothing was broken and there was no permanent damage.

It’s good to be back.

Technorati Tags: clinical medicine, snake bite, coronary artery disease

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