Honestly, I would suggest not playing it anymore, atleast until the patch comes out. A lot of people have actually been reporting their PS3s BREAK from the constant lag/crashes. Some are saying that it isn't the game's fault, but there have been a lot of reports of this in the past 2 weeks or so. At any rate, it certainly isn't good for your PS3 and will probably reduce its life span, especially if it is one of the older models.
Hopefully they release a patch that will fix it, but I guess Bethisda (is that even the name? idk) has a pretty lousy track record with things like this, as Fallout New Vegas had similar problems. And people are saying the company KNEW about this, because they only sent PC/360 versions to game sites to review. Pretty shady if you ask me. At the very least, if the knew about the problem they should have delayed the PS3 release to fix any bugs, and if they couldn't, not release it at all.
Thankfully, I'm still going strong. I feel like I have gotten a lot of gameplay out of it, so even if it breaks I won't be TOO bummed, although it will suck to not be able to completely experience the game.