diagnose

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Ability To Diagnose Is A Skill On It’s Own

Just like jam goes with bread, skill goes with the ability to diagnose. You don’t want one without the other.

Ability To Diagnose Is A Skill On It's Own

A mechanic who is highly skilled at fixing cars is of great value. But if he struggles to diagnose car problems, that won’t bode well for the car owner no matter the mechanic’s skill. That car will be on the hoist for a long time and, in the end, it will cost more to fix the car than it should.

Skill is important, but being able to diagnose a problem or identify what’s wrong is crucial to the outcome.

Being able to quickly see the problem is an ability that not everyone has. 

It takes more than physical skill; there is deep knowledge, intuition, experience, logic and creativity that all come into play. 

Not everyone possesses all these attributes or at least in abundance. 

A couple of weeks ago, my wife, Lily, was experiencing some stomach pain. It wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t going away and was even getting a little worse. 

A few days into it we talked about what it might be. Was it some kind of stomach bug, maybe something she ate? 

I asked her if there was any specific pain and she did say it was sore down on her lower right side. So I replied, “Could it be your appendix?” 

Lily brushed it off. She didn’t think the pain was that significant and that the pain was not isolated in any specific area. 

But a few more days later, things weren’t getting better. In fact she was more uncomfortable. So we decided to go to the hospital emergency department. 

That happened to be at about 8:40 pm … and possibly it was a full moon that night because the emerg was hopping.

There was no place for Lily to sit and, though she told the intake person what her pain was, she didn’t get triaged for almost two hours. 

At 10:30 pm she eventually was able to get into the system and join the sea of humanity in the waiting room. 

She managed to find a chair, while she watched others be taken into the patient examination rooms. 

At 3:15 am she was finally brought in for examination. However, there were no cubicles available so she was placed on a gurney beside the nursing station. 

At 5:00 am she was finally examined by a doctor who ordered a CT scan, and at 7:30 am the results came back that she had a ruptured appendix. 

… That’s a long time from entering emerg to identifying the problem. Sure, some of it was due to the volume of people there that night. But a good part of the reason it took so long for Lily to be checked out is the triage personnel’s inability to diagnose the severity of the issue.

Lily’s on a slow road to recovery now, but I wonder how much better it would have been if someone had have diagnosed her issue sooner. 

Here’s the thing: We like to diagnose when we have problems or trouble in our lives. We will say it is because of this or that. But there is one who has perfect skills and never fails to diagnose a problem correctly – God. Go to Him with your trouble and He will set you on the right path every time.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you diagnosed incorrectly in the last month? Leave your comments and questions below.

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My Injuries Keep Coming

I’m finding it more difficult to diagnose minor injuries than I used to. 

Years ago, when I had an ache or a pain, I could pinpoint the precise cause or incident of my injury. Now, when I find myself with a bit of discomfort, I’m not necessarily sure what happened to bring it on.

This is all new for me. For my wife, Lily, on the other hand, this is a phenomenon that has plagued her most of her life!

Throughout our marriage when Lily would say, “I’m sore”, and I would ask her what happened or what she had done, she would always say, “I don’t know. I’m just sore.” If she got a bruise, about 90 percent of the time she didn’t know how she got it. 

I’m kind of catching up to her in this regard, because lately I’ve had some sore spots on my body that are a little mysterious.

I wrote about my sore elbow back in the fall (read about it here), and although it is now slowly getting better, it’s been six months of pain. … I still have to be careful to warm up before I start taking shots on a goalie. 

It turned out to be a ligament problem and I’m still not completely sure how I got it … although possibly it was from excessive wrist shots in hockey.

The latest thing that has been bugging me is a sore thumb around the joint on my left hand. It’s been sore for a few weeks now. 

And I don’t have a clue how it happened!  

I wondered if I was getting a touch of arthritis when the knuckle at the base of my index finger of my right hand got swollen and very painful.

I didn’t have any explanation for my knuckle either, and it has been swollen now for close to two weeks. … It doesn’t help that I sometimes move it the wrong way or that people shake my hand with a little pressure. 

One of the guys I play hockey with said it was gout, but that was because he had just finished experiencing some gout in his foot. I knew his diagnosis was only based on his experience and had nothing to do with really being able to identify my problem.

But yesterday at church, I may have figured something out. 

I asked my doctor if I possibly have a bit of arthritis, but when I described what I was experiencing, he didn’t agree. So I responded that maybe I did just injury it. He kind of nodded.

A few minutes later I was talking with a group of other people and the topic of injuries came up.  While I was relaying to them my conversation with my doctor an idea came to my mind. 

I had grabbed a puck out of the air with my hand a week or so ago. Maybe – just maybe – my sore knuckle was a result of catching that puck with my hand. 

My conclusion: injuries come more easily as we age, but also our memory is not as sharp in identifying incidents with injuries. 

Here’s the thing: The only way to prevent sin from going unnoticed in your life is to stay diligent in identifying and addressing it each time. When you let sin slide, your memory starts to fade, and you then don’t easily identify the ramifications to that sin. Stay on top of your sin by identifying it right away and dealing with it. It will lessen the chance of a lingering sore spot.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What mystery in your life do you need to identify? Leave your comments below