Save your symptoms for the doctor

Health ailments don't need to dominate every conversation

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to save your symptoms for the doctor. Try
not to let medical updates dominate your conversations with friends

(00:25):
and family. Yes, we all have aging bodies and health issues,
but fascinating as our issues might be to us, they
probably aren't that interesting to anyone else. So I know
of a woman in her eighties who used to say
she wasn't interested in an organ recital. She didn't like

(00:50):
to hang around with people who spent most of the
conversation updating her on their various health issues. That is,
a recitation of what was wrong with their various organs
and such. I love that phrase now. Personally, I love
a literal organ recital. I love listening to a good
bach prelude on a church organ. But I agree that

(01:12):
the medical complaint kind of organ recital isn't as appealing now.
Of course, if you are dealing with a new diagnosis
that is a big part of your daily life, the
people who love you are going to want an update.
But I am talking lamenting the usual aches and pains
and less serious stuff. As someone who dealt with approximately

(01:36):
six months of rather serious back pain and all the
associated attempts at treatments. I know I could have talked
about this for hours, but I also quickly realized no
one wanted to hear about it for hours, maybe two
to three minutes max. Then was time to talk about
something else. So if you, likewise are of a certain

(01:59):
age where health ailments start to feature prominently in all conversations,
maybe you can find ways to move on after a
few minutes. Definitely note if you yourself have been talking
about something at length, if you realize you have been
talking about your digestive issues for ten minutes, you can say, laughingly,

(02:22):
that's enough of my organ recital. I just saw a movie.
I think you'd love pivot to a new conversation topic.
Self awareness is a blessing here. Now. Obviously this is
a little more complicated. If your friend is the one
who has been giving a lengthy account of her ailments,
you could ask whether she has talked with her doctor

(02:43):
about them, which is obviously a productive way to get
help with symptoms. If it seems like the list of
symptoms is more emotionally laden, you could ask about these
emotions how are you feeling about all this? Nudge the
conversation into deeper, more relational territory. If she is just

(03:04):
sharing the physical complaints to make conversation, you might be
able to shift the conversation in a different direction. For instance,
if she's talking about how time on the bleachers is
bad for people with bad backs, you might ask about
her kid's soccer season and nudge the discussion that way.

(03:26):
As for the organ recital, let this episode be a
nudge to go see if you can do anything about
any chronic issues that are affecting you. Go see your
doctor and see if you can come up with a
plan that's going to be more productive than listing your
ailments with anyone else. In the meantime, this is Laura.

(03:49):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a

(04:16):
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
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