shape and colour, originally uploaded by bobsee.
Ester once told me that her eye notices lines and shapes and until she said that I hadn’t considered the possibility. Instead I tend to notice colour.
When I saw this staircase in Nice I thought of you, Ester.
Posted in art, from the dark room, photography | 2 Comments »
wall colour Nice, originally uploaded by bobsee.
I wonder how much we are unconsciously affected by the colours around us. I know that here in Scotland a blue sky has a very different effect on people from a grey one.
I heard Annie Lennox talking on the radio today and she said one of the things that gave her feelings of belonging in relation to her home town of Aberdeen was the colour of the light, the sea and the granite buildings.
Well, here’s a building in the old town of Nice – I think these colours around you make you feel good – well, ok, let me be more precise – make ME feel good!
Posted in from the dark room, photography | Leave a Comment »
I have so enjoyed the series on Scotland’s Music with Phil Cunningham on BBC. The final part in the series is called Home and Away and traces some of Scottish music’s origins and its influences around the world.
Well, Tommy Bibey, imagine my surprise when Phil’s journey from Scotland took him to Cape Breton then down through Appalachia to the home of bluegrass music! Bluegrass has just been a name to me really but when Dr Bibey connected to me through this blog I got more interested – really because I enjoyed his writing so, and he’s impressed me as the kind of doctor, doctors should aspire to be – caring, passionate and humble. He told me his favourite bluegrass had its origins in Scotland and Ireland. It made more of a connection between us. The Scotland’s Music series (by the way, it looks like the BBC has now removed all the video clips from the earlier parts of this series – boo!) was something I recorded on my hard drive and I just got round to watching the last episode yesterday. I watched in anticipation and sure enough he made the link with bluegrass and with Alison Brown in particular (whose album ‘Stolen Moments’ is on my pod – the track ‘I’m naked and I’m going to Glasgow’ always brings a smile to my face on the Stirling/Glasgow Scotrail train!). So, it turns out I had some bluegrass in my collection after all!
I have a very diverse musical collection, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone who reads this blog – I am a great fan of diversity. Neither uniformity nor conformity appeal to me. Why is that? What is it about diversity that I find so appealing?
Two things spring to mind –
first of all, Deleuze has a great concept which he terms “lines of flight” – it’s the idea of not thinking of anything as having fixed co-ordinates, not seeing anything as existing as a point, but instead seeing all points as lines, so that a point is just a cross-section through a line or a thread or even a vapour trail
I love that idea of seeing whatever it is you’re considering in its origins and its becoming (see that subtitle at the top of the blog? “Becoming not being…….”) It makes everything dynamic, changing, moving, developing and it connects what is both to what was and what is to come.
Secondly, I love the idea of connections, seeing patterns and resonances. I think that’s why ‘Linked‘ appealed to me so much.
Amy, has a lovely post about ripples of connection and what a good metaphor that is for blogging…..and there we go…..a whole other set of paths to follow…..the threads that connect us…….and the stories that weave us together.
Posted in life, music, narrative | 2 Comments »
The front page of The Independent today carried an amazing story of a Kenyan man, Sammy Gitau. Sammy was born and grew up in the slums of Nairobi, scavenging on the rubbish tips. He found a prospectus for Manchester University and it captured his imagination. He dreamed that one day he’d go and study there despite the fact he only had two years of formal education. However, people laughed at the ridiculousness of his dream so he stopped talking about it. Things got worse for him and he became the main family breadwinner at 13 looking after his 10 siblings after his father was murdered. He earned his family income through drug dealing and theft. Then he ended up in a coma after a cocaine overdose. He survived and said of this experience
“When you are dying you make a deal with God,” he said. “You say, ‘Just get me out of here and I will do anything. I will go back and stop children going through the same kind of life as me’.”
He set up projects teaching slum children skills like carpentry, baking, tailoring and so on and came to the notice of some charities working in the area, one of whose employees heard about Sammy’s dream and helped him apply for a postgrad course in Manchester. They accepted him but British immigration turned him down not believing that he had any chance of managing the university course. Seven months later a judge overturned that decision and Sammy, with financial support came to Manchester.
Today he graduated with a Masters degree and said
“For the past few days I haven’t been able to sleep – I’ve been too excited. So many doors had been shut in my face because I didn’t have this or that. Now, finally, I can think big. Now I can go back to my projects and make sure they do well.”
Posted in from the reading room, life | 3 Comments »
There’s an ad running on TV here in the UK at the moment. It’s for a drug called Anadin Extra – a painkiller basically.
This really struck me. Here we have a woman with too many responsibilities, trying to literally juggle her tasks and her relationships. She’s not coping. She’s getting headaches. How is she going to get a better life? How is she going to tackle that old life-work balance thing? How can she be happier, healthier?
The drug companies answer?
Take drugs
I think that’s sad – especially when the drug companies themselves even know that most drugs don’t help most people.
What kind of a vision is this for a healthy society?
Posted in from the consulting room, health | 1 Comment »
What’s important in your life? Go on, take a pen and paper and make a list.
What’s on your list?
I’ll bet that much of your list will be invisible things – relationships, love, meaning, purpose, happiness, health, safety……..I don’t know – you tell me – what would you include and what’s the ratio of invisible things to visible, material things on your list?
Robert Solomon uses the idea of thin-ness to rail against the sterility of a life which is based on logic, but excludes a consideration of emotions. I think a materialistic life is a thin life – not that we don’t need material things (like food!) but that to consider only the material, physical phenomena of life as real, is both a delusion and, frankly, a poor experience of life. Life with the life taken out!
Saint-Exupery had it right in his Petit Prince –
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
or – in the original –
– Adieu, dit le renard. Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
– L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux, répéta le petit prince, afin de se souvenir.
so, do you agree? Are the most important things in life invisible? Are they exactly what cannot be measured?
Posted in life, philosophy | 8 Comments »
Our garden at Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital is lovely but one feature never quite made it to completion – the fountain. In fact the original fountain was ruled unacceptable by “health and safety” (don’t get me started!) “in case it causes Legionnaires Disease”! They did actually build the stonework with a modified design which would “bubble but not spray”. Well even that never got going so our fountain is a pile of stones. Sad!
One of the things I love about France is fountains. They seem to have no qualms about Legionnaires Disease (even though they’ve got way more legionnaires!).
Here’s a spectacular one in Nice –
You’ll see one of the men on poles there.
This is a dynamic fountain and at full force it shoots way up into the sky.
Posted in from the dark room, life | Leave a Comment »
A colleague at work read my post on mirroring.
She said, if it’s true that different people have different scan findings in the areas of the brain associated with mirroring neurones (which, it is hypothesised, are responsible for empathic ability), then does that mean that some people are born with greater empathic potential than others? And can the potential be developed?
This is a common question in neuroscience – when we identify either physical structures within the brain responsible for certain behaviours and qualities, or differences in function in those areas as highlighted by functional scans, then are we saying that people are born with these brain differences which then determine their characteristics? Some people might make that claim but from my reading I’d say almost every scientist thinks that the physical characteristics of the brain, originating in genetic makeup and embryonic development, are important, and may even set the limits of possibility. However, the nervous system is more “plastic” (the specific meaning of this is nothing artificial, it means it can change), than a simple one-off scan will ever show. Neuronal pathways develop, grow or shrink, depending on demand. What this means is that while we are probably born with different potentials, everyone’s potential can be developed or suppressed by experience.
She asked the question because she was wondering why some doctors are more empathic than others. Specifically, she wondered if empathy could be learned. I’m pretty sure empathy can be learned. I’ve seen medical students and qualified doctors become more empathic as they train in homeopathy which emphasises the patient’s narrative and a clear understanding of the patients’ experience.
But the question got me thinking about the place of empathy in the consultation. How much is it a quality developed from “mirroring”? Difficult to answer, but I think there’s an even more important element – being interested.
If a doctor is not truly interested in what a patient has to say, then they won’t listen, won’t understand and won’t be empathic. Can being interested be faked? No, I don’t think so. You’re either genuinely interested in somebody or something, or you’re not. Pretending to be doesn’t work. I’ve often said, when discussing the art of medicine, that if I ever need to see a doctor because I’m not well, then I’ll want one who frankly gives a damn! I want a doctor who, at least for the duration of the consultation, is genuinely interested in me. In fact, I’d recommend that anyone who doesn’t find people totally, compellingly interesting, shouldn’t study medicine in the first place!
Posted in from the consulting room, from the reading room, neuroscience | Leave a Comment »
…..same principle I guess. Without considering the individual and unique contexts of a person’s life we can neither understand their illness, nor help them find the best treatment and support. Iona Heath, who writes in the BMJ tackles the dumbing down of medicine in another article this week
We are witnessing a degradation of knowledge, which results from its bureaucratic application to whole populations. Too often, evidence from clinical trials is being shamelessly extrapolated across time, across population subgroup, and across condition. Again and again, efforts are concentrated on crude process measures, while clinical outcomes that are genuinely significant for patients because they reduce or delay suffering or prolong life are ignored. Thirdly, the present state of clinical evidence systematically neglects the reporting of harms
The point she is making is that we are abusing research findings which are conducted on specific groups of people by extrapolating the findings and conclusions and applying them to hugely diverse and significantly different groups of patients. The more we generalise, the poorer our understanding and effectiveness. She argues strongly for not applying the findings of the effects of a treatment on young people, to old people, for example. This is because of two main problems – first the setting of outcomes by the researchers (outcomes which might be important to the group under study, but not the most important to another group) and secondly because of a huge under-reporting of harms of a treatment.
As more and more treatments are directed at an intended long term outcome, the older patient is less likely than the younger one to have a chance of the intended benefit. However, as harms start straight away with treatments, the older patient is more likely to experience harm than benefit than the younger one. In addition, because of other body systems already failing, the elderly patient is more susceptible to harms from drugs than the younger patients.
And that’s just the consideration of age. What about other factors in other contexts which make a substantial difference? Sex, the presence of other diseases (‘co-morbidity’), and economic, social, cultural and psychological factors?
Context is all important in chronic disease especially. Here’s why…..
In acute disease, as we see on the far left, the green circle represents the pattern of symptoms consistent with the disease, and pretty much determines the whole picture. Most patients who are rushed into hospital have obvious patterns of disease. As time passes however we see that the green circle becomes a much smaller subset of the overall symptoms. This is because as the years pass, the individual brings more and more of themselves and their unique contexts into the overall picture. If we only aim at the disease, we miss helping most chronically ill patients.
Posted in from the consulting room, health | Leave a Comment »
patterns, originally uploaded by bobsee.
Look at this.
A bit puzzling at first isn’t it?
It snowed last night
Out in the car park, I saw this.
If it still doesn’t make sense to you, take a look at this wider shot –
Posted in from the dark room, photography | Leave a Comment »
