The blue deck chair: Don’t put up with pain

In an unashamed take from Graham Norton, I intend to write a few stories called ‘the blue deck chair.’ You are free to pull the lever and flip my chair. So please send feedback, flip, or let me walk…

Well, as I guess many of you know, if you received my out-of-office, I have had a surgery for a full hip replacement.

It was a success, obviously, with a bit of humour along the way. But I must say to anyone who needs this surgery, do not delay it. Have it as soon as possible if you need it and can have it.

And don’t assume you can have it. If you have a virus or an infection, or have had one immediately prior to the surgery, they will not operate. Why? Because hospitals are where you transmit and catch bugs. And, by the way, antibiotics are losing their efficacy at an alarming rate. Not to mention the research and development of new antibiotics is less profitable than developing drugs that can be prescribed to you forever.

Equally, if you have a heart condition or a respiratory condition, you may not be able to have the surgery either.

So, a lesson from aging is that the older you get, the higher the chance of you not being able to be treated. Self-obvious, but usually not so to the person who is aging. Sometimes the lesson can only be heard and understood from someone who has lost the chance to be treated.

This was a lesson I learnt from a friend who had a hip replacement twenty years ago. Now, twenty years on and with cancer, Doctors said they wouldn’t operate on her because the risk is too great relative to the gain. The loss of pain and the benefits of that were outweighed by the risk of death, or worse, even more pain.

This is not unlike investment, which entails the risk of loss; the older you get, the more loss hurts. And the bigger the risk, the higher the chance of total loss: economic death.

Pain, of course, is relative. And we all feel it differently. In my case, the condition developed over thirty-five years ago out of a stupid act of manually digging up a lawn in January. Thump. Thump. Thump, on my prime leg. Then, for no understandable reason at all, around three years ago, I fell off a cliff, and the pain meant I couldn’t walk much more than two hundred metres. Thus, I became Limpy Bruce. The pain didn’t seem that unbearable, so I put up with it.

Then, two years ago, I got the flu. It took months to recover, and I was left with breathlessness that just wouldn’t go away.

Anyway, coming out of surgery, and six weeks on, my energy levels are up to and surpassing my pre-op levels by a large margin. The clarity of my thinking has improved. I am no longer leaving the house with the keys in the door, leaving my cell phone on my desk at work, and all those other little things that make you (and others) think you might be getting dementia. And the breathlessness has gone instantly. This highlights that what is bearable has consequences elsewhere that you may not think is related.

Pain saps your energy, we all know that. Your body copes and redirects resources to do so, causing the efficiency of the whole body to deteriorate.

Now, sometimes the pain is not physical; it is emotional or psychological. This pain can be chemical or learned, or it can be induced in you by physical pain, or by others and their behaviour, real or imagined. Guess what? With hindsight, I was also more paranoid regarding others whom I trusted or should trust too.

No matter where the pain is, understand that the ripple effect spreads far and wide, and until you remove it, you won’t truly appreciate the impacts of pain.

So in business, as in life, if something is causing you misery, don’t leave it too long to confront it, and remove it. The business will be better for it, and the people in it will be happier and more resilient if you do.

Now, a short lesson in joy.

My surgeon, Haemish Crawford, an outstanding surgeon and human, said to me at my five-week post-operative visit that what keeps him doing this is the joy he gets from seeing his patients post-surgery. They look ten years younger, their faces are free of pain. The joy he gets from that energises him and those around him, and he never takes it for granted.

It reminds me that the greatest joy is not the stimulation of the shit we do and consume, but the joy of seeing others that you have helped be successful.

So, lessons from this surgery: don’t tolerate misery and pain too long, rip it off, everything will be better, take the risk, understand the risk, understand the risk and cost of doing nothing, and celebrate every day with the joy you give to others. Final observation, celebrate pain and misery because, without it, you will never know what happiness and being pain-free feels like!