The Collarbone Fairy
The Wee Yin's tooth fell out the other night. She put it under her pillow, and the Tooth Fairy came during the night. Unfortunately, or not, the Tooth Fairy didn't have any change and was unable to drive (smashed collarbone) so the Wee Yin ended up getting a tenner under her pillow.
The realy funny thing is that my ITM's Wee Yin lost a tooth on the same day. The Irish Tooth Fairy didn't have any change either, so my ITM's Wee Yin also got a tenner. Spooky.
I got a PayPal donation today from the CollarBone Fairy - I must have left the bone under my PayPal pillow. Thank You. You know who you are.
Back to the Doctor yesterday to get serious pain relief. This was, eventually, provided in the form of a bottle of morphine, to be taken every 4 hours. I have the fracture clinic on Friday. I don't know what they'll do, but it is entirely likely that they will have to, em, "do some manipulation" of the bone. This will involve cutting, pulling, pinning and - possibly - grafting bone from somewhere else (the hip is a favourite).
So, yesterday at the Doctor, he asked if I could take my top off for him to have a look. The Missus was there too. I struggled to get out of the chair, then started struggling with my top. The Doctor, already late with his appointment schedule, asked me "do you mind being a little bit faster? I am very busy". Even the normally calm and patient Missus was going to thump him. I asked him to excuse me for having a smashed clavicle, since I know that he has lots of seriously ill patients to see. Then again, if he had given me the right painkillers in the first place then perhaps I wouldn't have had to come back three days in a row.
He sighed, wrote "morphine" on the prescription pad, and accepted the truth of this.
Why is it that I have to fight so hard to get help from the medical profession when I need it? And, at the same time, have to fight so hard to avoid their "help" when they think I need it and I don't (e.g. - "you better start being nice"). It doesn't make sense.
The Missus never used to believe me, till she started going to appointments with me. She was blessed with a GP who actually cared about the well-being of his patients, in a more holistic sense. If you had a ten-minute appointment, and he thought that you needed half an hour, then everybody else would have to wait. This was her experience, and she thought that al doctors were the same.
The basic problem at work here is one of identification. Let me give you an example.
A good friend of mine is in the fish bizz-ness. Huge processing plant - everything from prawn cocktails to smoked salmon. They employ loads of people who pack the fish on the production line. To the fish-packers, it's a job. It's an hourly rate. Something to pay the bills. They do not identify with their job, they just do it - if that makes sense.
Some doctors identify with their job. They tell themselves "I am a doctor. I heal people". It is their philosophy. They believe in what they do, and they have an excellent bedside manner. Some doctors, on the other hand, have more of fish-packing attitude. They do not identify with their job - they come across as arrogant when, in actual fact, they are just cynical and disinterested.
When I was away at school, I could spot thw two types a mile off. There were teachers who identified with what they did - "I work with troubled kids. I help troubled kids"- and teachers for whom it was just a job - "is that the time? My god, time to get my coat on". Perhaps it is because of this experience that I strongly identify with what I do for a living - I am passionate about it. This is what makes me so good.
Martin, distributor for AJP, identifies with his role as a riding instructor and a distributor of hand-crafted bikes. AJP themselves identify with their role as the menufacturer of hand-crafted bikes. The owners of the Company hand-check each bike on the production line. Try getting identification like that out of Yamaha or Honda. This level of identification, and passion for what they do, was recognised very highly in the Trail Bike Magazine review of the new AJP PR3.
I have a big presentation to do next week - where ourselves and Mr Happy present our competing bids to the outsourcer. The outsourcer will then pick one of them.
The two bids will be very very different. One of them will be based on corporate slickness - all beautifully presented PowerPoint slidesand graphs and charts - but will be devoid of passion. The other one will be less slick, less beautifully presented, but will have passion written all over it.
The choice for the outsourcer is a simple one. Do you want to use people - like Mr Happy - who talk a good game but, ultimately, are just out to shaft you for as much money as they can make? Or do you want to use people - like me - who do this because they are passionate about it, who are obsessed with doing the right thing but who may be a little less posh about the way they speak?
We were having difficulty wading through all of the legal Terms and Conditions that the outsourcer was throwing at us. To be honest, it had caused a bit of a panic. I did the only thing that could be done in this situation - called the outsourcer and asked for help.
You'd be amazed how people are willing to help you if you ask. People like to be asked for advice, they like to appear knowledgeable, and - as a general rule - don't like smart arses. By asking for their help, you are less likely to come across as a smart arse, and are far more likely to have people willing to help you.
Unless, that is, they're doctors who don't identify with being doctors. Then what you get is a whole lot of attitude that rings of "how dare you ask me how I reached such-and-such a conclusion". I make it a rule never to just take tablets prescribed to me without knowing what they are for - what dose they are, what the side-effects are, what family they're in and stuff like that. Some doctors actually like this - it is a welcome break from people just taking the green prescription slips away with them and not saying anything. Some doctors are very affronted by you apparently questioning their judgement. In another context, this would be hubris.
So my daily routine right now consists of:
The realy funny thing is that my ITM's Wee Yin lost a tooth on the same day. The Irish Tooth Fairy didn't have any change either, so my ITM's Wee Yin also got a tenner. Spooky.
I got a PayPal donation today from the CollarBone Fairy - I must have left the bone under my PayPal pillow. Thank You. You know who you are.
Back to the Doctor yesterday to get serious pain relief. This was, eventually, provided in the form of a bottle of morphine, to be taken every 4 hours. I have the fracture clinic on Friday. I don't know what they'll do, but it is entirely likely that they will have to, em, "do some manipulation" of the bone. This will involve cutting, pulling, pinning and - possibly - grafting bone from somewhere else (the hip is a favourite).
So, yesterday at the Doctor, he asked if I could take my top off for him to have a look. The Missus was there too. I struggled to get out of the chair, then started struggling with my top. The Doctor, already late with his appointment schedule, asked me "do you mind being a little bit faster? I am very busy". Even the normally calm and patient Missus was going to thump him. I asked him to excuse me for having a smashed clavicle, since I know that he has lots of seriously ill patients to see. Then again, if he had given me the right painkillers in the first place then perhaps I wouldn't have had to come back three days in a row.
He sighed, wrote "morphine" on the prescription pad, and accepted the truth of this.
Why is it that I have to fight so hard to get help from the medical profession when I need it? And, at the same time, have to fight so hard to avoid their "help" when they think I need it and I don't (e.g. - "you better start being nice"). It doesn't make sense.
The Missus never used to believe me, till she started going to appointments with me. She was blessed with a GP who actually cared about the well-being of his patients, in a more holistic sense. If you had a ten-minute appointment, and he thought that you needed half an hour, then everybody else would have to wait. This was her experience, and she thought that al doctors were the same.
The basic problem at work here is one of identification. Let me give you an example.
A good friend of mine is in the fish bizz-ness. Huge processing plant - everything from prawn cocktails to smoked salmon. They employ loads of people who pack the fish on the production line. To the fish-packers, it's a job. It's an hourly rate. Something to pay the bills. They do not identify with their job, they just do it - if that makes sense.
Some doctors identify with their job. They tell themselves "I am a doctor. I heal people". It is their philosophy. They believe in what they do, and they have an excellent bedside manner. Some doctors, on the other hand, have more of fish-packing attitude. They do not identify with their job - they come across as arrogant when, in actual fact, they are just cynical and disinterested.
When I was away at school, I could spot thw two types a mile off. There were teachers who identified with what they did - "I work with troubled kids. I help troubled kids"- and teachers for whom it was just a job - "is that the time? My god, time to get my coat on". Perhaps it is because of this experience that I strongly identify with what I do for a living - I am passionate about it. This is what makes me so good.
Martin, distributor for AJP, identifies with his role as a riding instructor and a distributor of hand-crafted bikes. AJP themselves identify with their role as the menufacturer of hand-crafted bikes. The owners of the Company hand-check each bike on the production line. Try getting identification like that out of Yamaha or Honda. This level of identification, and passion for what they do, was recognised very highly in the Trail Bike Magazine review of the new AJP PR3.
I have a big presentation to do next week - where ourselves and Mr Happy present our competing bids to the outsourcer. The outsourcer will then pick one of them.
The two bids will be very very different. One of them will be based on corporate slickness - all beautifully presented PowerPoint slidesand graphs and charts - but will be devoid of passion. The other one will be less slick, less beautifully presented, but will have passion written all over it.
The choice for the outsourcer is a simple one. Do you want to use people - like Mr Happy - who talk a good game but, ultimately, are just out to shaft you for as much money as they can make? Or do you want to use people - like me - who do this because they are passionate about it, who are obsessed with doing the right thing but who may be a little less posh about the way they speak?
We were having difficulty wading through all of the legal Terms and Conditions that the outsourcer was throwing at us. To be honest, it had caused a bit of a panic. I did the only thing that could be done in this situation - called the outsourcer and asked for help.
You'd be amazed how people are willing to help you if you ask. People like to be asked for advice, they like to appear knowledgeable, and - as a general rule - don't like smart arses. By asking for their help, you are less likely to come across as a smart arse, and are far more likely to have people willing to help you.
Unless, that is, they're doctors who don't identify with being doctors. Then what you get is a whole lot of attitude that rings of "how dare you ask me how I reached such-and-such a conclusion". I make it a rule never to just take tablets prescribed to me without knowing what they are for - what dose they are, what the side-effects are, what family they're in and stuff like that. Some doctors actually like this - it is a welcome break from people just taking the green prescription slips away with them and not saying anything. Some doctors are very affronted by you apparently questioning their judgement. In another context, this would be hubris.
So my daily routine right now consists of:
- wake up
- write some proposal stuff until it hurts too much
- take some morphine
- be zonked for about an hour
- goto 1
several times a day. Try doing that if you don't identify with what you do - you'd last about 5 minutes.
I don't know what it is yet, but good will come out of this collarbone thing. I have been given this for a reason, and that reason will be revealed to me in the fullness of time. It may well just be that having to sit still for more than 5 minutes at a time will teach me a lesson, or it may be that the whole Morocco experience is a turning point in one way or another. Will keep you posted.
Download the Manic Mission Information Pack for the full story ...
posted by 2009 Dakar at
Thursday, November 15, 2007
1 Comments:
Interesting, over here they are more than willing to write scripts. In fact they do that more than listen to what you're actually telling them. I always feel like I'm being brushed off.
No problem with controlled substances either. Oh the OxyCodone isn't taking the edge off anymore? Here's some Darvocet.
If I sent you a photo of my collection of empty pill bottles from the last 8 weeks of fractured shoulder, you would shit yourself.
Finally stopped taking them, and enjoyed a week of flu like withdrawal symptoms. Fun.
Wish I could just get a good, old fashioned primary care physician.
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