Thanks for asking. I’m loving it. Lots of reading, some chores around the yard and woods and home, lots of cooking, plenty of naps, up as late as I want to be, and up as early as feels right (usually around 8 AM instead of 5:20 AM.).
I did practice medicine for the first time since retirement today, when a neighbor dropped by with a swollen knee. I checked him out and advised him. And I realized I don’t miss doing that sort of thing AT ALL.
Daughter’s recovered nearly 100% from her surprise stroke. Fingers crossed there but so far so good.
Got my 5th covid shot the other day too, the bivalent booster. I still have not tested positive for covid, despite having seen so many patients with it.
Getting my medicare paperwork filed is a PITA but it’s coming along. I’m getting my pension paperwork in too, as I only have about 2.5 months left of vacation to burn before I’m officially off the payroll.
I feel well rested and relatively stress free for the first time in, well, ever.
Nice! I’m letting my boards lapse! I’d have to invest about $1k to extend them a year, and then have to retake them. Just not in the mood for that, since even if I return to work part time, it won’t enhance my salary. Tellwiddit.
I hear you on that. My license doesn’t expire until 2024, but I’m done with continuing ed. I would have stayed on Medicare, but lacking an office address, they published my home address on line, which isn’t what you want when you’ve worked in locked unit inpatient psychiatry.
Oddly perhaps, I think that’s a great sign. It means you really were more than ready to go and aren’t likely to get any lingering regrets about leaving several months down the line. Sounds like you have more than enough to do to keep you occupied and an occupied mind (just often enough) is a happy mind. Glad it is working out for you and great news about your daughter .
I’m thrilled for you! Naps, yes! Going to bed and getting up when you want to, yes!
So glad your daughter is doing well. Good news all around.
I used to worry about you in your job. Really, I did. I was afraid the stress was going to do you in. Your report today made me very happy. That’s important, you know.
If you don’t mind me asking how old is the daughter with CF? I had a friend decades ago who had a brother with CF who died when he was about 19, and IIRC that was about the expected lifetime for someone with CF then (the early 80s). Hopefully, she’s been the recipient of improved technology and treatment. Glad to hear she’s doing well!
@carrps thanks for asking. Thanks to new medical breakthroughs, there are now meds out there that essentially ‘fix’ the cellular defect in chloride ion transport that causes CF patients lungs to clog with too thick mucus thus causing infection, pancreases to get plugged and stop producing digestive enzymes and insulin, livers to plug up with thickened secretions and become dysfunctional, etc.
It’s truly been a miracle drug for my kid, now age 33. Unfortunately it doesn’t restore the lost lung tissue, nor the failed pancreas or consequences of years of too high blood sugars. But at least it’s halted the progression, which would, I believe would have led to death by now had not my kiddo gotten on the meds 3 years ago. There are still medical challenges and consequences from the ravages of CF suffered so far, but now we have real hope and real improvement
CF patients who get on these meds before the disease causes damage to their tissues may hope to lead nearly normal lives going forward.
That’s absolutely wonderful news! I was hoping to hear that. My friend was much younger than her brother, and she was the only other sibling. Her parents were terrified to have another child, and she felt their fears all her childhood. Horrible disease. I’m glad they’ve found a way to treat it.
I’m glad to hear about the new drugs, and hope that your daughter continues to do well and improve.
I’m also happy that retirement is treating you so well. I’ll be following your example in about five or six months, and then we’ll be moving out of state to somewhere cheaper, cooler, and greener. I have to admit that sometimes I feel a little scared - I haven’t been “not working” since about 1978 or so, and I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it. Stories like yours and other retirees here give me courage.
It’s lovely to read this, and I’m glad you–and your daughter!–are doing well. It’s cool to see different ways that people can make retirement work well.
If I can hijack, I retired in May of 2020 at 56. It is indescribably amazing. My dream was a retirement of live music. I’m currently at a festival up the coast. It’s my 118th day this year where I have gone to a show. I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m having a very enjoyable dating life. Every day I can’t believe how fortunate and privileged I am.
I’m contemplating retirement, but mostly because they’ve cut staff, and i suddenly find myself overworked. And retirement seems like a “get out of jail free” card.
But when I’m not overworked, i really enjoy my job. I’m good at it, and it gives me structure.
So I’m torn. It’s encouraging to see stories from people enjoying retirement.
The pertinent question then becomes is there any realistic likelihood those cuts will be reversed in a reasonable period of time. Which would be before you get so burned out you no longer enjoy your job at all, even when not overworked.
My unfortunate experience in a bureaucracy is that administratively cuts are easy, re-staffing is hard. In my little unit we were cut to a skeleton crew, then when our responsibilities and duties were very substantially increased over the next several years they added back one of the four slots that were cut . They basically “prefer” paying scheduled overtime to adding more sets of benefits (the powers that be still bitch about overtime expenses of course, despite having created the situation requiring it). Now there is some hope and discussion of clawing back another position (much needed) next fiscal year. Which will still leave us down from our original staff and this has happened slowly over the course of a couple of decades.
I retired on 1999/12/31 and have never regretted it. My job as a professor involved teaching, research, and committee work. The last was mostly make-work. I enjoyed teaching, but hated having to mark exams and was extremely happy to give that up. I certainly enjoyed research. I was able to keep a grant till about 2015 and see 29 publications on CV dated 2000 and later.
And which med they’re given depends on which genetic mutation they have. Simply amazing.
Several years ago, there was a news story about a volunteer FF who died at the age of 20. At first, I assumed that she was most likely in a car accident, but she wasn’t; she actually died from complications of CF! She was something like 4’8" tall and never weighed more than about 80 pounds, but they said that she could wrangle a firehose or a stretcher with the biggest of the men, and it was quite a sight to see her doing this with an oxygen concentrator strapped to her back. They said she was in relatively good health until just a few days before she died.
The oldest CF patient at the time died a few years ago, aged about 80, and was the oldest known at the time of her diagnosis, in her 50s. She’d always been treated for asthma, and when she got this DX, they changed her methods and they said this enabled her to continue living as long as she did.
I’m posting this link for two reasons. First of all, Bob Flanagan was the subject of a documentary called “Sick” that I watched via Netflix DVD (and be warned, it is NSFW/C) and at the end, it says that the rate of CF is lower in Native Americans. Having done rotations in Zuni and Navajo land, they’re an exception; the rate there as of the early 1990s was about 1 in 1,000, due to a lot of inbreeding. Those people probably had an “Anglo” ancestor with the gene.
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. They basically “prefer” paying scheduled overtime to adding more sets of benefits (the powers that be still bitch about overtime expenses of course, despite having created the situation requiring it). Now there is some hope and discussion of clawing back another position (much needed) next fiscal year. Which will still leave us down from our original staff and this has happened