I was chatting with a close friend about a week ago. He’s placed to be on top of current events with a depth and nuance that my vomit reflex can’t stand. We had an interesting conversation which was mostly me chirping, “But what about…?” And him giving me a really good update on stuff I’d never be able to stay upright long enough to research.
My brain was twinkling away on the incoming tide, sorting the info and soaking it into the correct metaphorical tide-pools and littorals.
I soon realized that, though I was sorting words coming in, I was having a terrible time getting words out. I didn’t realize, until that moment, just how completely that parsing a thought may feel verbal, but might not be.
I thought I was wording just fine as I thought, “okay… this goes here with news ownership; this goes there with political gamesmanship from Brand X; this relates both to Brand Y and legal process” and so on.
On the outward flow, all I could get going was along the lines of, “so, uh, how’s the… thingy… you know, from… what’s-his-name…” and I realized I sounded immeasurably more mentally inept than I felt.
I wanted to say, “look, I’m still in here and I’m taking in everything you say. I just can’t operate the outgoing current right now and my word capturing is going great, but my word finding seems to be underwater.” I could not fund the words, of course.
It’s been grimly fascinating to me to find the many ways a brain can go off-line in bits & pieces, and how my mental activity and neurological activity have these unthinkably complex ways of associating and dis-associating within themselves and between each other.
Everyone’s brain is linked up in completely unique ways. Just imagine what it would be like to work with people who could relate exactly what is and isn’t working and when. It’d set off such an explosion in the advancement of knowledge that.. wow.
A pointless note of wistful longing
It’s a real pity I can’t handle any schooling, let alone medical school, because this is exactly what neurologists need to know about to make their lives – and, boy howdy, ours! – a lot more useful and interesting.
As it is, patients are considered inherently unreliable in the medical mind, and, although that’s extremely insulting, it’s not crazy within physician context: the precision of thought and accuracy of terminology is rarely there, because so much training goes into commanding the information the way a doctor does.
Conversely, it’s adapting through a traumatizing cascade of brutal experiences that creates a skilful and well- informed patient. Training that’s so high-level it amounts to nosebleed seats for one; autodidacticism that makes Richard Francis Burton look like a playboy (oh, wait..) for the other. (When I can find someone who’s as brilliant an autodidact but not a moral negative, I’ll revise that sentence.)
It really is a different language and these two rather fragile mind-sets have trouble reaching across the cultural gap. (Anyone who thinks doctors aren’t fragile should just try correcting a few. It can get rough.)
I think the ratio of truly secure doctors to the rest is about the same as truly adept patients: they are definitely around, but can be hard to identify even when you’ve got one. It takes hard work and a lot of fearless honesty in both cases.
Buckling on my helmet. I’ll get it from both sides now.
The onus winds up being on the traumatized patient, who usually has more clock-time to prepare for the visit. The doctor has to turn around and deal with someone equally intense in 2-7 minutes, so they have to stay mentally free to do so.
Yes, let’s hear it again for corporate medicine and its unholy offspring. So efficient, such a great use of limited resources… not.
There isn’t (yet) a cultural context in the field for cross-training as a patient and as any sort of licensed practitioner. That’s the key deficit.
Practioners get culturally demoted when they become patients (which is disgusting, but predictable in such a heirarchy) and patients get shoved into a little cultural pocket for things that fall between weird and interesting without fully qualifying as either.
Fun, eh? It’s one stellar example of the waste in the system.
