What’s on the other side of the door?

So I just had a pretty major surgery…spent 3 days in ICU and then spent 3 days in a “regular” room. Biggest difference, fewer patients per nursing team in ICU…makes sense to me.

I won’t bore you with all of the details, but night 1 in the regular room, they shut my door so I could get some sleep. Middle of the night I rang for some help and they said they would be right in. I waited about 30 minutes and ended up assisting myself and it hurt…pretty bad. I was angry, hurting, tired…but as I laid there I asked myself what might be happening on the other side of that door? My request may have been minimal compared to the other 15 (I made that number up of course), while my request seemed urgent to me…the medical team may have been saving a life on the other side of the door…I don’t know the answer to that and never will.

I tell you that because 30 minutes later my nurse finally came in. Now I’m not going to tell you that I was the happiest person on earth at ~4am but she had come in to help me and I found out that someone had been critical on the floor…about all I know.

We need to look at our work, home, family, and social lives like this. Whether it is our folks walking into the door at work, customers coming into your store, kids coming home from school…you name it…almost always a door opening/closing involved. Find out what is really happening on the other side of that door…especially if you, or them, are having a bad day…might be more to the story than you think!