Heroes Not Zombies

Sometimes it’s easy to spot the uniqueness in whatever it is we are looking at. Like this flower here, it is SO unusual to me that I could hardly have missed it. I’ve never seen petals forming this towering, layered shape before. And, of course, the reflection, as always at least doubles the impact of the flower.

In all my years working as a doctor I found that every single patient was unique. Everyone had a singular, personal, different story to tell. No two people had shared the same life, had identical experiences, responded to whatever they’d encountered the same way. No two patients had the same memories, the same imaginings which formed their fears, anxieties, hopes and expectations. Nobody had exactly the same beliefs and values. Nothing was black and white.

Every life was nuanced, shaded differently, shaped uniquely.

But superficially, it wasn’t like that. Superficially, patients were classified and categorised according to their diagnosis. Too often their pathologies were the sole presentation.

I even found that despite having an open, questioning style, when I asked patients to tell me their story, many simply told me their diagnosis, perhaps what treatments they were receiving, perhaps what interventions they had undergone already, but then they stopped. In other words they told me about the shared, common features of the disease they’d been told they had.

It could take a little more prompting to get them to describe their symptoms and their suffering and it could take a little more to get them to tell me who they were, to share with me their life story, their beliefs, values, expectations, fears and memories.

But the more personal the story, the more obviously unique it would be.

Sometimes I have to remind myself of that. It’s easy to judge and dismiss people we don’t know – celebrities, politicians, strangers – to put labels on them and then to look no further. But the truth is, the more we get to know someone, the more unique we realise they are, and the more unique we realise someone is, the more we have the chance to understand them.