Overwhelmed By Personality

As an audiologist, I have opportunity to meet folks from young to old, from all walks of life with disorders and differences. Really, it could be anyone that walks in my door. What I know as a strength and what is rewarding is reaching the otherwise unreachable connecting with people that might be difficult to connect with, having relationships with those that seem to be impossible to relate to. It is not because I feel I have something to offer them but it is because I know they have something to offer me.

The other day I was tasked with testing a 14 year old girl with cerebral palsy.  This girl was sent to me to do audiometric brain stem response evaluation (this is an objective neurologically evoked response that allows hearing threshold testing in infants and the difficult to test). The reason for the referral from another clinic was that they could not get results with traditional evaluation. This young woman was accompanied by her mother at the time of evaluation. From the moment this young lady arrived in my office, it was obvious that her ability to communicate with language was quite impaired, most of her vocalizations were sounds without apparent distinguishable content. Even with the absence of understandable vocalization, it was soon realized that we could communicate. I ended up having a conversation with this child that we both understood. As we started to understand each other, I understood with certainty that I could indeed do subjective testing and that this girl knew exactly what I required of her in order to accomplish this task. We ended up getting results that others had failed to get in her 14 years of life because we were able to communicate and understand each other because we had developed a relationship. There is a very strong clinical implication in this story as to the importance of connecting with and understanding each patient that walks in my door but there is a much stronger implication that I would like to share.

During our visit together I was profoundly impacted by the strength of this child's personality and how she made me feel. I am not talking about how it made me feel dealing with the sadness of a handicapped child but I am talking about the nonverbal communication of joy and happiness. Sometimes we see what we want to see in life and transfer feelings from within but this was different. This young woman had such a beautiful, magnetic personality with strenght and joy that could not be misunderstood. While her body limited her ability to communicate physically, she had learned to communicate with subtleties that were now very powerful. I went in to my office overcome with emotion having come to conclude that I was the one who had gained much from this encounter, that I was the one that had been given a gift that day.

How much more of a responsibility do those of us have to make others feel with our words and our actions. We that are fortunate enough to have been born without handicap have an even greater set of tools with which to engage those around us. It is so difficult to put into words the effect of that particular encounter on my life  but it is definitely indelible and unforgettable and undeniable. I could not help but be drawn in by this child, it was she who connected with me not the other way around.

The Power of Sincerity

In life, there are often anecdotal experiences that lead one to the knowledge of inherent truths, sometimes validated by research and other times validated through common sense consideration. There is much I have learned from my patients over the years. I learned very early in my career that my patients required an authenticity to my approach. This group of people wanted me to be sincere and honest, with the reward being loyalty , trust and friendship. I have known in my heart that sincerity is a very powerful human characteristic, recently one of my patients validated this viewpoint through a wonderful personal experience.

The story that is told is one that took place many years ago. This woman with adult children had been seeing a particular ears nose and throat specialist for some time and had developed a familiar but professional patient doctor relationship. The woman was a smoker and the physician had been advising her to quit for some time. It came to the point that at every appointment this topic of conversation would inevitably arise. The patient would listen and return home unfazed and with no motivation or intention to stop smoking. While the advice was politely received it really did go in one ear and out the other. One day the patient arrived at the doctor's office for an appointment and found that the physician was somewhat distracted and disturbed. It turned out that this doctor's sister in-law had only the day before been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. True to form, at this visit the doctor again brought up the topic of smoking and the health concerns that he had for the patient. On this occasion it was a heartfelt and personal plea that was rendered to the patient to stop smoking. The woman went home like any other day not giving a great deal of thought to the possibility of quiting smoking. The very next day without a great deal of thought she left her cigarettes at home and never smoked again. When I questioned her about it she really did not have a rational explanation for what came over her other than the power of the sincere plea brought on by personal tragedy.

As I thought about this message delivered to me through a personal experience I couldn't help but relate that experience to my own professional life. One has to be true to their beliefs speaking truth from the heart in order to really be heard. If we, as professionals, are not convicted of the message we deliver, our patients will not reward us with trust and loyalty. At this point in her story I turned to my patient and suggested to her that I sincerely hoped she would go to the mall and buy me a wonderful Christmas present. I suppose my request was not all that sincere since she did not really feel compelled to do so.

The art of conversation.....lost, or just changed?

lol....ttyl..... bff....g2g...nvm....is this how we converse today? Indeed in vast portions of society this is the language of choice. The question becomes what does this do to our ability to really understand one another and effectively communicate? I do not dispense of  this form of communication as irrelevant, it is obvious that is is here to stay and evolve as a communication mode.

In the professional context as an Audiologist I have reason to be concerned with the way in which we communicate specifically with the hearing impaired. The generation caught in the middle of this clipped short formed communication style as opposed to the more elongated, developed, elegant conversation of an era fading away are the Baby Boomers.  The Baby Boomers do communicate on the information highway  but also value social conversation that develops over time. These folks still take part in group social activity that revolves around communication and conversation.

The hearing impaired individual requires multiple cues to really understand speech. There is a necessary need for redundancy and reiteration of subject and content to enable optimal understanding for the hearing impaired individual. In addition to auditory redundancy is a need for further redundancy linked to visual cuing as well. We find communication optimized when we can both hear and see the individual with whom we are conversing.

No matter what our generational style of communication it is probably true that taking the time to have a slow conversation that develops over time on a face to face basis can be a rewarding and relaxing process. Sitting down and having a coffee with a friend or colleague can lead one to have a clearer understanding of that person. It is far more likely that we will misunderstand a quick comment or assertion than one that is introduced, developed, and completed as a thought.  Should it not be our intent to make every effort to be clearly understood?