Читать книгу 1,000 Years of Diabetes Wisdom - David G. Marrero - Страница 13

by Martha Funnell, nurse, Ann Arbor, MI

As part of a peer-to-peer project at the local Veterans Administration Medical Center, I was to lead a training session on communication skills and active listening so that the patients could work effectively with each other. All of the participants were Vietnam Veterans who had type 2 diabetes. Before the session began, I listened to them talking about their war experiences and the difficulties they had encountered in the many years since their return to the U.S., including the development of diabetes and its complications. Although I had led this type of session many times with health professionals, I felt very intimidated about the content I was to present to very tough men, and whether it would be viewed as meaningful by them.

During the session, the patients seemed to be listening and were asking questions, with the exception of Mr. O. He was somewhat unkempt looking and didn’t speak or look up the entire time. I finally stopped trying to engage him, feeling that he probably was not getting anything out of it anyway.

Over the course of the next month, the patients were to call each other over a special telephone system and then return for a group session. At the follow-up, when we began to discuss how the conversations with their peers had gone, Mr. O spoke up right away. He talked about how isolating diabetes is and that many of his struggles with food were related to boredom. He told us that although his wife and daughter did all they could for him, no one really understood what it was like to live with diabetes unless they had it. He compared it to explaining being in Vietnam to people who weren’t there.

He told us about his own neuropathy and about a friend who had both legs amputated as a result of diabetes. He then turned to his partner and said, “You are getting some of the signs of neuropathy, but I am going to do everything I can to help you so that you don’t have the same fate as my friend.”

I was both surprised and moved by his concern and insight. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if others in the health care system had dismissed him as I had—feeling there was not much that could be done or that he didn’t care about his diabetes because of his quietness and appearance. Once more I was reminded how harmful judgments can be and that every patient needs the opportunity to be heard and treated with respect.