Party Balance

When playing Dungeons and Dragons or any kind of game with friends, it is important to properly balance strengths to make sure that you have different needs represented.  If you have everyone in your team as the powerhouse fighter, who is going to take care of healing the party after someone has been hurt?  If everyone is focused on healing, who is considering the intelligent solution out of this mess?  Who can take damage for those that are focused on finding a solution if everyone is looking around them at the same time?  Or for a non-nerdy reference, if you only play a game of soccer with forwards, then everyone is lost if the opposing team breaks past the line and takes on the goal alone.  

This is the concept of Party Balance, making sure that you have bodies covering different needs for the strength of the group as a whole.  I've realized recently that I've been following a similar strategy when managing my health appointments.

Firstly, I don't have a group with me to every appointment, more so the kinds of appointments that involve a lot of detail and/or big decisions rather than the simple kind of check-ups.  It has been essential to have another set of ears at important, condensed Mayo appointments where we are considering significant changes to my care.  

Below I have outlined some of the different character types, specifying what they bring to the table and some potential things to look out for.

The Compassionate Presence

Upside:  This is the person that is there primarily for emotional support, present with kind words, reassuring smiles, and hugs before you even realized that you needed them.  This person is there to hold your hand and make the room feel less oppressive, that everything else might just be alright.  

Potential Pitfalls:  It is possible that this character type can be so invested in supporting you that they might forget to listen to the conversation fully.  Sometimes, too, a more practical answer is needed instead of concern in certain moments.  

The Insider

Upside:  This person knows the medical field in some capacity.  They know how to speak in the doctor's lingo and ask questions there are relevant to understand more about the situation, able to explain some elements in more detail after the fact.  

Potential Pitfalls:  It is possible to focus too much on the semantics and the specifics that other problems and other questions are missed--assumptions about general procedures are made without clarification.  Additionally, the conversation could veer off into shop talk.

The Veteran

Upside:  They are able to really understand what you are going through because they have been there themselves, compassion through identification.  They are also able to ask the kinds of questions that only someone that has been through it would know to ask.  

Potential Pitfalls:  The Veteran has some idea of what is happening, but that doesn't mean that your situation is going to play out exactly the same way--if this person can only see your situation as a repeat of their situation, then there could be some misinformation or unnecessary confusion, possibly also taking over the conversation.

The Bulldog

Upside:  This person is going to make sure that your needs are met.  Ready for a round of pain meds?  They're ready to stare down the nurse's station.  Feel like your doctor is ignoring you?  They're making sure the doctor knows that this interaction is not going to continue that way.

Potential Pitfalls:  If the Bulldog does not have a direction, that means that they will guess at one; this could be great, if they preempt a problem, or really frustrating if they make one.  

The Distraction

Upside:  If you are needing to consider your dream team to come into the room with you, something big is going down, and it is nice to have someone there to help pull you out of that harsh reality, even for a moment or two, to find a space to breathe and think about something else.

Potential Pitfalls:  If the Distraction is so focused on keeping you distracted that you miss important information or don't take the appropriate time to process, then you are officially distracted to the point of avoidance, which is also not healthy.  

The Freshman

Upside:  The Freshman asks the kind of questions that everyone else so inundated with the situation forgets to ask.  They help bring components into question that everyone else had just assumed because "this is the way things are" and can be questions that can reveal that this is not, in fact, the way things are or that they could be better.  I'm going to call a specific variant of this out by name:  my father-in-law, Mike, does a particular angle with this called "The Dumb Daddy," where he proceeds to start the conversation with "Now, I might just be a dumb daddy, but..." and then asks a very important question that hadn't yet been addressed.  Different angle with the same effect.  

Potential Pitfalls:  Picking apart ALL pieces of the conversation can get tedious and stall the rest of the conversation from happening.  For me specifically, there are some answers that I need to get, too, that I am impatient to hear:  taking over the conversation entirely is not okay.

Just be clear, people can embody multiple roles and all bodies that are willing to come with me are at least a little of the Compassionate Presence for being there in the first place.  This is not to say that persons cannot be even all of these things, but everyone will have some element that sings out more specifically.  For example, I have my mother (Insider, Compassionate Presence), my father (Veteran, Bulldog), and Andy (Freshman, Distraction) coming with me for this adventure up to Mayos.  See what I did there?  I managed to bring complete party balance.  I have not brought this group specifically in for these kinds of appointments before, so our dynamic in this situation hasn't been fully tested, but my group has experience in knowing how to be supportive of me.  I think we're going to do just fine.

Two weeks away now.