DECIDING to be open to a different conversation...
Ok picture this…walking into a local coffee shop, thinking ‘yep, I’ll grab a coffee, check emails, and honestly, have a bit of a death scroll on IG before heading off to work’.
Order. Find a table. Smile at the guy at the next table. Who engages me in conversation.
Now, I know that this guy was simply wanting to have a chat. Nothing more…but seriously, I was feeling a bit annoyed.
I was really ready for a bit of mindless death scroll time.
There was weird moment where I actually thought that I can politely answer, but make it quite clear that I wasn’t interested in conversation, OR I could be open and see where the interaction goes (nowhere weird, I promise you).
So I decided to roll with it.
We chatted about his brain surgery, in which part of his brain was taken out.
We chatted about the effects of this, his life, his memory, his need to have taught himself to speak again.
I can’t tell you how inspiring this conversation was.
I found myself slipping into prac mode - discreetly seeing if I could see any signs of cranial nerve imbalance the he spoke, and noticing that there was slight mental state impairment with conference and continuity of conversation (Nothing short of incredible given the history though).
I got thinking about the part of the brain that been operated on, and how that would have affected different part of this entire world.
When he got up to leave his table, I noticed the way he got up, his gait and posture to see if there was any possible issues with innervation to the larges muscles and peripheries.
As he left, he said it was ‘lovely to chat with you, if I see you again and don’t remember you, its because I have issues with my short term memory’.
It was such a beautiful reminder of a few things for me:
be open to a different conversation - when we go into any situation or consultation with a narrow lens of how things can go, we can easily miss important moments/info/opportunties.
if you have great back ground knowledge, you are able to have that as a ‘program’ running, discreetly, in the background, checking, observing, but still being present to the person in front of you.
be kind, you never know what people are/have been through, and how sometimes the simplest of things can have a big impact (this simple conversation changed the trajectory of my day).
I hope that today has found you open to new conversations, experiences and information.
Are you ready to get the background knowledge running in the background so you can really connect with your patients?
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