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When I was a house officer, John Gibson (now the Dean of Aberdeen Dental Institute) suggested I had a “spider sense”.

I had an ability to extract a confession from a patient in front of me.

I don’t find it difficult at all.

It falls back to that trick I have spoken about previously in the blog of asking, are you alright? And when the standard yes comes back, ask again and say “no, are you really alright.”

If you can bind that with the spider sense that you know something is wrong, you have a huge ability to engage in a trust relationship with someone in which you can give them help.

I would like to be a little bit non-specific about this next story for obvious reasons, but I think you will get the point.

One of the people who are working on the building project for me is terminally ill.

I pretty much knew that in a very short conversation with the person I had in the middle of last week.

I am not sure why I knew that, (I think that it is a bit like Malcolm Gladwell’s firefighter running into a room and knowing that even though the fire is tiny, they need to get out because it is actually under the floor) but I did know it.

The person in question who might be a man or a woman, but it doesn’t matter, told me that they wouldn’t be around at the end of the week because they were going to the doctor and in itself that is unremarkable, but something about it was remarkable.

Soon after that I found myself on my own with the individual, talking through in some detail of the project as we walked around the building and so I asked them if they was alright, which of course, they replied yes, so I asked if they were really alright, to which they replied no.

The individual in question has been fundamental and instrumental in opening my building, they actually work for “the other side” but we’re all on the same side with the same aim.

Without this individual we wouldn’t be opening or wouldn’t have opened, certainly not on time.

I therefor have a debt to this person, I owe them a debt of gratitude and they are in trouble.

The only thing that I can offer in that situation is whatever I have to offer and so I said, if you need anything from me, you come to see me.

I explained what I had done previously and the previous work lives and explained what my Wife does for work and said if there was anything that we could do, through the knowledge that we have or the contacts that we have they were just to speak to me.

That is once again, the righting reflex.

I can’t help myself and I will never help myself and I do not want to help myself.

After that we talked about philosophy of what I was trying to build and what we are trying to achieve, whether it might or might not work.

This individual has been involved for many years in many projects, many of them health care.

They have never built a building like this and they are so proud to have been involved.

We talked for ages, just about stuff and I was reminded of a song by Frank Turner (as I often am) it doesn’t matter which one it is just the last line.

“The only thing that is left to do is live”.

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