"look for the helpers"

 

Mr. Roger's mother got it right when she reminded him to "look for the helpers" when he saw scary things happening around him.

"When I was a boy and

I would see scary things in the news,

my mother would say to me,

"Look for the helpers.

You will always find people who are helping."

~Fred Rogers~



Helpers are especially important when bad news arrives around the holidays...when illness strikes, a loved one dies, a neighbor's house goes up in flames, or depression takes its toll.

Who are these helpers? How will we recognize them? Here are five sure signs you're looking at a helper:

• Helpers meet trouble head on. Like deep winter snow, they go right out into it and plod through it just to help others through it, too.
• They ask existential questions. Why? Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why now, during the holidays? They confront the ultimate mystery: why not? Why are any of us spared? 
• Reflecting on the work they have chosen, they are grounded in empathy. They suffer right along side of the people they care for.  
• The fact that they encounter suffering and understand what it's about solidifies their sense of purpose.
• They consider service a privilege.

 

"The best way to find yourself

is to lose yourself

in the service of others."

~Mahatma Gandhi~



If you are a health care provider--a doctor or nurse, a nurse practitioner or a physicians assistant, an EMT, or a therapist of any kind--you are a helper. If you are a first responder, we depend upon your help. If you work as a caretaker, a teacher, or a pastor, you're a helper. If you are a parent or grandparent, you are definitely a helper. If you staff a food kitchen or a homeless shelter or an animal rescue, you are one of us. If you drive a snow plow, repair our roads, or haul away our trash, you are helping. What would we do without you? How would we get through the holidays? How would life go on?

Each of us is a helper in our own special way. We encounter each other every day at the intersection of give and take, of sorrow and joy, of pain and pleasure.

When you see scary things happening around you, do what Fred Rogers did when he was a boy. Look for the helpers...and remember that you are one of them, too.

"The world is full of

healers, helpers, and lovers.

If you can't find one,

be one."

~from Treehouse of Hope~

jan







when storytelling is a life-saving skill

 

 

The art of storytelling is as old as the spoken word. It’s an important part of every culture, race and religion. It entertains, informs, and connects mankind across time and space.

Most people enjoy reading or listening to stories at their leisure. The health care provider, on the other hand, listens to stories all day long because it’s part of his job. The first thing he does when he sits down with a patient is to elicit the history, or story, of the patient’s illness. It forms the basis of all that follows: performing the physical examination, arriving at a diagnosis, and formulating a treatment plan for the patient.

 

"Tell your story

with your whole heart."

~Brene Brown~

The health care provider listens for specific details that help him make the diagnosis. If the patient’s problem is pain, the provider needs to know where the patient feels it, whether it’s sharp or dull, steady or throbbing, constant or intermittent. He needs to know how long the patient has had the pain—for a day? For a week? For years? What makes it worse? What makes it better? For example, the pain associated with a migraine headache is throbbing whereas in a tension headache it is usually steady. Gallbladder pain can come and go for months whereas the patient with appendicitis has steady pain and usually seeks medical care within a day or two. These are important details.

The problem is that patients don’t know what the physician needs to hear. They don’t arrive at the office with a list of relevant signs and symptoms. It’s the provider’s job to ask about them, but he has only so much time to get to the bottom of the patient’s problem.
 

www.fotosearch.com

For this reason, doctors often redirect the patient who appears to be getting off-track or is slow coming up with answers. In fact, one frequently quoted study found that most physicians interrupt and redirect the patient when they are as few as 18 seconds into the interview. Frequent redirection leads the patient to believe that what he wants to say isn’t important or relevant. Instead, he tries to give the doctor the information he needs while other parts of the story go untold.

 

Let’s say the patient presents with a three day history of abdominal pain. He answers all of his doctor’s questions. The pain has been present for four days. It started in his upper abdomen, but now it is diffuse. The pain is constant and it radiates into his back. Eating makes it worse. In fact, the patient says he hasn’t been able to keep anything down for the past two days. After a focused physical exam, and after running a few tests, the physician correctly diagnoses him with acute pancreatitis. But that doesn’t explain why the patient starts to complain of a headache, has trouble keeping his balance and appears confused twenty-four hours after being admitted to the hospital.

What the doctor doesn’t know is that the patient has been drinking heavily because his wife walked out on him recently. In fact, he blacked out a couple of days ago and he woke up on the floor next to the bed. The patient didn’t mention it because he was busy answering the doctor’s questions about his stomachache. So the doctor missed the small subdural bleed the patient sustained during the fall until days later when he finally developed symptoms.

This is a theoretical scenario but it highlights an important problem. Obtaining an accurate and complete medical history takes time. When the patient is constantly redirected in order to satisfy the provider’s agenda, important parts of the story may be left out.

 

"A layman will no doubt find it hard

to understand how pathological disorders

of the body and mind can be eliminated

by mere words.

He will feel that he is being asked

to believe in magic."

~Sigmund Freud~

This reinforces the importance of the hearing patient’s full narrative in medicine. Besides being a sign of respect and concern, the ability to listen to the patient can be a life-saving skill.

 

"Health care is supposed to build

on the patient's story with each contact,

but if we don't know the story

each contact becomes a closed episode

of its own, disconnected from

every other episode.

Fragmentation results as the outcome of a

non-storied approach to health care."

~Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD~

jan

what good is it to listen if no one is willing to speak?

 

If you didn't know better, you'd think there were fairies about.

 

How do you know if you have a story to tell? How do you know if someone else needs to hear it?

"You are so brave and quiet,

I forget that you are suffering."

~Ernest Hemingway~

 



Even though it may have taken place decades ago, it still comes back to you. It still brings a smile to your lips, or a tear to your eye, or an ache in your chest, or a momentary time-out during a busy day. It comes to you out of nowhere...when a certain song comes on, or you catch a whiff of rubbing alcohol, or the late afternoon light enters the room at a certain slant...the way it did when you were in the hospital as a child, or when you were sick or injured as an adult. Or maybe you're watching the news and you see you own story unfolding in someone else's life. You know how they feel and you know what they need because you once needed it, too. You are constantly reminded of the illness, or the injury, or the recovery that claimed a huge chunk of your life.

Maybe you wish you could forget it altogether. Or undo it. But you can't. It stays with you because it's an important piece of who you are today. It is your story begging to be told.

"I have learned now that while

those who speak about their miseries

usually hurt,

those who keep silence hurt more."

~C.S. Lewis~



Why would anyone want to hear your story when they are having problems of their own?

Because they want to know how you got through it. Were you in pain? How much weight did you lose? How much sleep? What brought you comfort? What gave you strength? Where did you find hope?

"Tell your story because your story

will heal you and

it will heal someone else."

~Iyanla Vanzant~

Your story may be full of pain. You may be mired in sorrow. It may be a triumph of healing, or an unending struggle. You may trivialize what you have endured in contrast with the greater suffering you witness in others. Don't let it shut you down. The rest of us need to hear from you. What good is it for us to listen if no one is willing to speak.

 

"Healing yourself is connected with

healing others."

~Yoko Ono~

jan