New Years Resolutions

As you can see, mine included blogging again. Fortunately, I'm in a brief research hiatus from surgical residency, so for the next year or so, I actually have some free time. Today I was inspired to start by the Huffington Post of all things, and with good news!

I realized that one of the biggest obstacles to blogging while being a resident was how difficult it is to read outside of work when you're being overworked. After a 14 or 16 hour day, or 30 hour call, the last thing I wanted to do was do more analysis of information, make more decisions, or think at all. I read a lot of Terry Pratchett, not so much the New York Times. Now with free time, and more importantly, free brain time, I can read scientific journals again (although now Archives of Surgery is in the mix) and newspapers, and even blogs without the nagging feeling I should be sleeping or tomorrow will suck. Since starting research about 6 months ago I've read (or listened to) about 60 books, and actually feel like I'm having an interesting thought or two again. Like, how will I ever go back to being in the OR again when research time is so freaking great? The answer: surgery is even more awesome, but the cost of that awesomeness is Pain. Yes, the capital P is intentional.

More to follow.

More like this

As I mentioned, I was on the road over the weekend. Unfortunately, that means I didn't manage to come up with a new post for this morning. That's OK, though. Off to the archives we go. This post originally appeared on February 7, 2006. Holy crap! That's over two years ago! Enjoy (I hope). Fear not…
Nonmedical people always seem to have a conception of surgery as being a particularly glamorous profession. So did I to some extent before I entered medical school, although my surgical rotations quickly disabused me of that impression. Somehow, working from 5 AM to 11 PM every day and several…
I've been meaning to write about this topic for quite a while but never really found a reason to. Indeed, this one's been floating around in the back of my mind for a long time. Perhaps one reason is that it's hard for a surgeon to write about this topic without coming off sounding like an old fart…
I've been harshly critical of the entire concept of "integrative medicine" (IM), which has over the last few years nearly supplanted the former term used for non-science-based medicine or medicine based on prescientific ideas represented as though it were scientific medicine, "complementary and…

Glad to have you back in the blogosphere.

I think Orac will be happy to have another Doc around these parts again, especially if you take on some medical quackery along with any denialism topics.

By Paul Hutch (not verified) on 05 Jan 2012 #permalink

Great to have a new post! Denialism blog has long had some of my favourite reference posts, and it'll good to no longer have to refer to it as inactive.

You guys have some of the best stuff around. It's always a treat when you give us something new. Thanks!

Welcome back!

Welcome back. I definitely missed you including your serie on surgery.

A.L.

By Autistic Lurker (not verified) on 06 Jan 2012 #permalink

Great to see you back!

I added you to my RSS feeder, so don't let me down! :) Love your analysis and comments. Cheers.