Y’know, it’s an old saw, but I remember the first time I heard it: My younger brother, 14 or 15 at the time, had a black eye. We were leaving church, and the huge, gruff old parish priest noticed it as we were leaving mass. He put his hand on my brother’s shoulder, looked him in the eye, and said “I guess you were talking instead of listening.”The poignant humour of this anecdote increases over time. Goodness knows that occasionally I get caught talking instead of listening (for the sake of someone’s ego, let’s just attribute it to enthusiasm). But at some point in our lives we all might need to begin to listen rather than talk.I could probably write a series of columns—and maybe I will—about how listening helps patients. But this one is about how listening has helped me.I was interviewing an aboriginal patient. She did not seem very engaged in the discussion until I asked her about her feelings about health. She became much more animated and conversant as she told me about something she described as “the seven grandfathers and the balance wheel.”She explained that as a child, she had learned about the seven grandfathers (Wisdom, Respect, Love, Honesty, Bravery, Humility, and Truth) from her elders. These principles by which to live life intersect the balance wheel, whose components include the spiritual, mental, physical and emotional elements surrounding our centre—and health is the delicate balance of all of these.At least that is my simplistic understanding of a very complex belief system. But considering our understanding of the human body, its physiology and the pathophysiology of disease, it makes sense.Every illness impacting any of these components of health is the result of one or more physiological systems whose balance has been upset. Addressing the problem involves trying to correct this imbalance while trying not to create new ones. It is how drugs, and all other therapies, actually work.This new perspective has changed the conversations I have with patients. It also creates a construct for what is broken and how to fix it, and fits the beliefs and knowledge base of those whom I serve.But although this new knowledge helps me to help people even more, the seven grandfathers would tell me to keep listening.Ken Burns is a pharmacist at the Diabetes Care Centre at Sudbury Regional Hospital.
