Why I Look at What Is Between, Not at the Parts

Why I Look at What Is Between, Not at the Parts

Set the stories so far side by side and one thing stands out.

Belly and breath. Gut and brain. Heart and autonomic nerves. Breath and heart. And aiming, and stopping.

Every one was a story about two things. Nowhere did it say that a single organ had broken down. The belly is fine and the breath is fine, and they go out of step when they move together; the heart is normal and the lungs are normal, and the way they mesh is not what it used to be.

This is the place I keep hold of.

A test looks at items separately. That is how it measures accurately. The heart as the heart, the lungs as the lungs, the stomach as the stomach, each with its own result. But no form has a box for how one item stands in relation to another. That is the price paid for the accuracy of measuring things apart.

Symptoms happen precisely in between. So people arrive carrying several test sheets. Not one of them shows anything wrong, and the body goes on being uncomfortable.

I do not tell such a person that the tests were wrong. The tests did their job accurately. It is only that what is troubling them now is not among the items the tests count.

So in the consulting room I do not look for one more part. I look at how the parts already reported as normal are meshing with one another. I take the pulse and watch the breathing with it; I ask about digestion and ask about sleep alongside.

That all the parts are normal is good news. Restoring a mesh that has slipped usually leaves more that can be worked with than repairing something broken.