In a recent staff meeting we discussed “Who are we?” (Yes, I listen to leadership podcasts and then subject the long suffering staff to my little exercises). We all had to come up with reasons the business exists. I loved to hear how one entity could mean so many different things to different people. Staff said things like, “We exist because we care and sadly, it often seems that no one else does.” “The business exists so we can put our kids through school.” “The business works because we are allowed to love our patients and their families.” “We are a good team. We are a family.” “We have a great location.” “We have the best relationships and connections.” “We are a place where people feel safe.” “It puts food on our tables.”
A natural progression from asking “Who are we”, is reflecting on the question, “Who am I?” I’ll probably always be the little girl who couldn’t speak English, wet my bed ‘til I was eleven and got picked last in netball, every time, without fail. But I was also the girl who was incredibly loved and was surrounded by an army of people who supported and cared and poured out their mentorship with reckless abandon. To my staff, I’m the one who pays them, but they also know that when the chips are down, I’ll be first on the scene to defend and help, but only after I drive them absolutely mad with my spectacular inconsistency and demands for the perfect cup of tea. To my kids, I am the most powerful person in the world as I provide the Wi-Fi. To my husband I’m a mystery as he cannot understand why I still cannot park my car properly in the garage despite having enough practice after 19 years of living in the same house. To my dad, I was the most wonderful, bestest creation ever and he just adored me ‘til his last breath. To call centre agents, I am without a doubt Lucifer re-incarnated.
In all other aspects of life, we allow ourselves and our businesses to have many facets and aspects and angles, but somehow, when a person receives a diagnosis, we tend to strip them of the rest of their humanness and they become just that one thing. It is as if society immediately forgets that a patient can be other things and not just a body with an illness. As patients progress to more severe illness, my heart breaks to see them becoming just a number, or a name with a prognosis that absorbs every other facet of who they are. We usually allow ourselves to be a good cook, bad driver, fun-loving mom and museum lover wrapped in a nuanced bundle, but somehow when that person is hooked up to the chemo drip or connected to a ventilator, we forget the rest of the tapestry that makes up their lives.
So, is it not wonderful that the relationships we have cultivated and the family we have treasured all our lives rise up at exactly these moments to remind the world and ourselves of who we are, apart from a stage four cancer or a brutal auto-immune disease? While I sit at work, there is always a constant procession of people coming to see their loved ones, showing up day after day, not because it is easy or fun, but because it is right. I particularly think of Jennifer, who has not said a sentence in months, and between the brain tumours, radiations and chemo, has been stripped of every bit of her personality. She lies in bed, day after day, the little bit of fluff on her head a sad reminder of the full head of hair she used to have. To me, she has only ever been frail, pale and totally dependent but the steady stream of joyful friends that come daily and tell us about another Jennifer. Her tall, handsome husband, with an easy smile, proves that she must have been quite something to bag a hottie like him. The fact that we run out of vases all the time because her room is so filled with flowers, tells me that she must have loved to garden. Her grandkids play around her hospital bed and fill the room with pictures they draw. It is almost three years into her illness, and yet her people come. Does that not speak of the investment she made in their lives, that now when it counts, comes to fruition? Her people simply keep showing up to honour her.
But then I see the other side too.. the people that lived differently and made their investment in other things, and now, when they need to be loved and cherished more than ever, they have no one that shows up and protects them. Often the only ones to arrive are those wanting a power of attorney document to be signed, or a work colleague that comes to rubber neck and see how a powerful corporate legend has been brought to his knees because of an illness. Sometimes they do not even hide the fact that they want to know when the person will die, clearly eying an inheritance.
It’s been years since I woke up in wet tangled sheets and thank God, I’m not forced to play netball anymore, but it’s all still part of me. We work hard to remind our guests and ourselves that despite a surgery or a recovery or an end-of-life journey is the only reality of our guest’s lives, they are more than just their battle. They are mothers and fathers, friends, gardeners, cooks, pranksters, Wordle-lovers, car enthusiasts, cyclists, card carrying EFF members (I’m making that one up) dog owners, proudly owned by a cat and haters of coriander.
When we talk further in the staff meeting this also comes up: that our guests are treated as people first, and then we care for them as patients too.