Healthy Perspectives

While I was attending a lecture the other day by Daren Brooks, I reflected on health and health businesses. He brought up a valid argument that I have thought about for a while now, who is the authority on health. He mentioned his experiences after graduate school when he went to 7 seven different health officials (herbaligists, doctor, acupuncturer, psychologist, etc) and got 7 different diagnosises (he actually had made up his symptoms). He then went on to talk about how if we are creative with our health knowledge then we don't have to find ourselves stuck in a health department, but that we can do what we want to and get paid for it.

He then had us list topics we were interested in and threw out some ideas of ways that we could pursue that area that were maybe non-traditional. I mentioned patient education and he mentioned that you could create a program, with a manual and maybe some CDs and then take it to a hospital and propose it to the hospital administration. Me... little old me... teaching other people something that I don't really have any "experience" in, but have heard lots about. And yet, why not?

If I know something about anything, shouldn't I try and share it with others, shouldn't I try and help people out? I can't profess that I know everything or that I have some amazing proliferation of knowledge, but I can help set up a program for patients on their way to recovery so that they can make habit changes and instead of having to come back for subsequent surgeries can enjoy their lives and their changed lifestyle.

It was interesting, as Daren was leaving, because he mentioned that we are the only ones going through our experience, we are the only ones that know what we are feeling, so even though we can get advice from doctors, herbaligists, mother-in-laws, etc. it is always up to us to ask ourselves what we need and to reconnect. So in the end, the health professional is not just the guy who went to school for eight years, but it's you and it's me.

And that is what I would call a healthy perspective.