It’s corny and nerdy, but a friend told that me out of everyone he knew, he’d trust me to carry The One Ring. I still consider it one of the best compliments I’ve gotten.
In high school, I was just kinda vibing by myself, and a girl came up to me and struck up a brief conversation.
“You don’t seem to care what other people think about you. I wish I could be like that.” Which I assume was intended as a compliment.
In retrospect, it seems like it was probably in part an advance with reserved romantic intent. In retrospect I probably got a surprising amount of that, I was very socially oblivious back then and some situations make more sense to me now.
That one probably sticks out to me the most because back then I didn’t get many compliments. As I’ve gotten older, more savvy, more skilled, and more confident, I get so many compliments that they just kinda fade into the background. Combine that with deliberately trying to be humble, and they get forgotten pretty quickly.
“[my name], you have more punk in your little finger than I do in my entire body”.
Said to me by my late best friend, who was the punkest dude I have ever had the privilege of knowing — the kind of punk that reminds me to get angry at systemic injustice in the world rather than internalising it all and spiralling. I can’t do much to fix the world, but it’s good to be angry at the right things.
When someone gives a compliment, the weight of it is determined by a combination of what the compliment-giver values, and the values of the person receiving that compliment. For instance, I deeply value ideological pinkness, and so that compliment hit harder than if I didn’t. But even if I didn’t especially value punkness, the compliment would’ve still landed because I knew my friend deeply valued punkness.
Man, I miss the dude. But I carry him with me everywhere I go. I loved him so dearly because at the start of our friendship, he saw aspects of myself that I couldn’t see. Knowing him helped me to become who I am today, and it’s compliments like this that helped me along the way.
‘I love your voice, its so soothing,’ I’ve been pretty insecure about my voice for basically all of my life, so that one hit.
You never hurt me.
Said by one of my favorite patients.
Moving people around when they can’t move themselves isa complicated balance of factors. The sizes of people involved, strength, room, the surfaces you’re moving on or to/from, availability of various tools of the trade, exacerbating health conditions, etc. It seems really simple when you see it done, but if you want to maximize safety for the patients and cargeiver/s, you have to plan things out before you jump in. That takes a little training and a shit ton of experience because training doesn’t actually provide everything you need to know for optimized results.
This patient? Stroke, significant loss of mobility and strength, next to zero use of one side of her body at that point (though that did get better with some hard work). So, since she was a tall lady and couldn’t tolerate a lot of the jostling and back & forth it takes to use a hoyer lift, it was manual work all the way.
I was the only man that could lift most patients solo, and the only one that could lift anyone there solo safely (for a given degree of safely that my back is still paying for tbh).
But because I wasn’t just a slab of beef, I planned every move.
That paid off with her. I could move her in bed, get get showered, get her dressed, everything, and not cause pain. Not that she didn’t hurt on her own, she did. But I didn’t add to that.
It turned out over the years that I’d hear something similar from a lot of patients. But this one was the first to say it in a way that resonated. Like, if you’re asking someone if what you’re doing is causing pain, them saying no just isn’t the same thing. When it’s someone that specifically refuses to do some of her daily needs so she can wait for you? When you ask why, and she says “you never hurt me”, that shit hits hard.
Some shit about the job still eats away at me inside. That one? Makes it worth it.
