try to listen

I'm living at home. In "palliative" care. That's not good but, could be worse.

Hey Deb! I have come home to die. Nonsense... you came home weeks before to-die! ba-boom :-)

Anyway, there is no real time limit. Meanwhile, it's a great life :-)

I'm cared for by Deb, who more than cares. Cared for by the kids, who do as they should: get on with their own lives.

And cared for by professional carers.

Those professionals are well-trained. And they honestly care It's all a great service.

Only trouble is: the professionals are trained to care but they seem unable to listen, to adapt.

Palliative care involves a lot of people, patients, who are frail and aged. Possibly, most are both. Frail and aged comes, with the need for palliative care.

I am aged -- but not frail. Try to explain that -- and the carers are not able to hear.

Take the four steps between me and the kitchen:

One of the early carers has a simple rhyme to get me safely up stairs. Something about, first knee up to heaven, next knee... I don't know. A safety rhyme from his recent training, I guess. Designed to remind me -- the frail, aged patient -- how to safely step up, and down.

Except: it is nonsense.

I can step up. I can step down. I could step up two or three steps at a time. I could jump, safely, down all four steps at once. (No, not even I am that stupid :-)

What I can *not* do -- is clearly see where I am placing my left foot.

Going up, going down, doesn't matter... when my left foot approaches the ground -- I need to place it carefully. Or I may miss my footing. My *left* footing.

I try to explain this... the carer is unable to listen. He repeats his rhyme for the frail and elderly.

He cares. He provides advice (some more useful) 

He is trapped by his training. By his preconceptions:

I am a palliative care patient. I must be frail and aged. I need help with stairs... A problem with vision -- because it involves neither age nor frailty -- is beyond his understanding.

It's known as crystallised learning: 

First is fluid learning: a young child sees what is really there. As we get older, we overlay reality with more and more experience.

Eventually we have so much experience that we can instantly see the solution to any problem... we are now acknowledged "experts" -- unless the problem is not what we, in all our experience, have learnt to see.

We lose the ability to be "fluid" thinkers. What we see is... what we *expect* to see.

You see it often in older, experienced managers. They've done all this before. In any situation, they quickly know what to do.

They are experienced, expert managers. Unless they fail to see that this situation is... different. Then they apply the same old, tested and true, solutions -- which now fail.

Sometimes the explanations for failure, the excuses, are just as tested and true... fully crystallised :-)

Hmmm... I had no idea that rant would wander so far afield :-)

So:

yes, you know. Yes, you are the expert.

You still need to look. To observe. To ask. To listen.

Perhaps... this time... there is something different.

Be prepared to think fluidly.

You may find a better solution.

Or, at least, a solution which fits the situation: as it actually exists. In this particular situation.

Be... fluid... in your thinking.

Listen... carefully... to the patient.

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Independent Dexitroboper

half blind, half deaf, dying of cancer,

So what.

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..: notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com