As a postscript to a previous blog regarding life being a series of disappointments, I thought it may be useful to explore my own coping strategy for disappointment.
An effective way I have found to deal with this phenomena has been to simply lower my expectations - the question is "How low should I go?"
So I accept now that most of the male Cambodians I know will go to Karaoke, buy beer girls & have girlfriends as well as wives & children, but that still didn't prepare me for seeing them bring prostitutes back to the hotel or when they get karaoke girls pregnant.
Or I know that most health workers take bribes but does that mean I should expect them not to treat poor patients who can't afford bribes?
And I expect 3 months of drum & gong banging at 4 am every morning in the rainy season, I've actually found that NOT wearing ear plugs helps as the expectation to not hear anything at all is eliminated, but the progressive rock pumping out of the speakers at 3 am today exceeded my expectations of the usual plinky plonky music. Perhaps I really have become 'comfortably numb'.
When only one person attended TB training on day one but then left after 5 minutes, I told J "it's not a failure it's just meeting our already low expectations."
When a Cambodian colleague recently text me to apologized for "letting you down", I replied he hadn't let me down as I hadn't expected anything from him in the first place.
But if you expect nothing then you will get nothing, so in truth I still expect an awful lot & I am constantly feeling frustrated &/or angry with disappointment.
It would appear that some Cambodians have kept their expectations much greater than mine. At the end of the cardiogenic shock protocol that I have been editing recently there was a suggestion that if drug therapy wasn't working to insert an "intra-aortic balloon pump" - appropriate but not really available or realistic in Cambodia. However the suggested treatment for irreversible cardiogenic shock that followed the intra-aortic balloon pump (I like to think this was one Cambodian doctor's very high expectations rather than just plain stupidity) was "Cardiac Transplantation". I laughed until I cried, whether this was through mirth or despair was less clear to me.
An effective way I have found to deal with this phenomena has been to simply lower my expectations - the question is "How low should I go?"
So I accept now that most of the male Cambodians I know will go to Karaoke, buy beer girls & have girlfriends as well as wives & children, but that still didn't prepare me for seeing them bring prostitutes back to the hotel or when they get karaoke girls pregnant.
Or I know that most health workers take bribes but does that mean I should expect them not to treat poor patients who can't afford bribes?
And I expect 3 months of drum & gong banging at 4 am every morning in the rainy season, I've actually found that NOT wearing ear plugs helps as the expectation to not hear anything at all is eliminated, but the progressive rock pumping out of the speakers at 3 am today exceeded my expectations of the usual plinky plonky music. Perhaps I really have become 'comfortably numb'.
When only one person attended TB training on day one but then left after 5 minutes, I told J "it's not a failure it's just meeting our already low expectations."
When a Cambodian colleague recently text me to apologized for "letting you down", I replied he hadn't let me down as I hadn't expected anything from him in the first place.
But if you expect nothing then you will get nothing, so in truth I still expect an awful lot & I am constantly feeling frustrated &/or angry with disappointment.
It would appear that some Cambodians have kept their expectations much greater than mine. At the end of the cardiogenic shock protocol that I have been editing recently there was a suggestion that if drug therapy wasn't working to insert an "intra-aortic balloon pump" - appropriate but not really available or realistic in Cambodia. However the suggested treatment for irreversible cardiogenic shock that followed the intra-aortic balloon pump (I like to think this was one Cambodian doctor's very high expectations rather than just plain stupidity) was "Cardiac Transplantation". I laughed until I cried, whether this was through mirth or despair was less clear to me.
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