Ever since I can remember, I have always loved building things. I'd sit glassy eyed, wholly in the moment and build Lego blocks or wooden block buildings.

During my research fellowship in cardiology, I had some extra time and bought a table saw and taught myself woodworking.

It was when I almost cut my left ring finger off that I was first exposed to a plastic surgeon, who essentially does with humans what I do with wood. Except that with plastic surgery, the cool thing is that what you do has to take into consideration how the suture line will scar and what the natural creases in the skin are, where the nerve will regrow.

Then I got into apple trees; planted 40 of them in my backyard. I realized that pruning is kind of like plastic surgery. You cut and prune and the finished product is what eventually grows out after the surgical pruning. Sometimes the tree looks good after it grows. And sometimes you look at the ugly scraggly bush you butchered and think "better cut 'er down." You can't really do that as a plastic surgeon.

I wasn't attracted to plastic surgery in medical school. I worried about all these people who wanted to look hot and would never be happy with any results because, let's face it, no one is ever perfectly satisfied with what they see in the mirror. Even the most beautiful supermodel thinks that there is something - eyes too far apart, nose with a small bump - that is not quite right. And what do you do about about really ugly people? Can plastic surgery make someone like me turn into someone like, say, Robert Redford? I asked a plastic surgeon once if he could make a beautiful person out of someone ugly. He laughed and said that what I was suggesting was kind of like polishing a turd.

These days, woodworking helps me relax. Wood doesn't talk back. It doesn't have a nervous husband or a daughter whose heart is breaking when you say that it is too short or too knotty or too cracked. It can be cut or shaped or sanded or glued. It is easily mended and mistakes can be scraped or filed away. And if the mistake is too far gone, it makes a nice heat when I throw it in the stove in my shop.

Most of the time, I love being a doctor. It is a privilege to listen to my patient's stories, be an invited witness to a large part of their lives, their loves, their trials and, at times, their deaths. It used to bother me that I couldn't do more to change the course of my patients' lives; that I couldn't undo the damaged heart muscle after a heart attack, couldn't repair a failing heart. I have come to a serene acceptance of the things I cannot change about heart disease and consequently have been better able to enjoy and laugh with the person behind the heart, however damaged or bad it is.

And yet, at the end of a long week, I still find quiet when I'm alone in my shop with a piece of wood, turning it into a bowl, or a chair, or just a bit of warmth to heat my cold shop.