Lotus Eater

One of the members on my team is a medical student. Perhaps he was just being a statesman, or perhaps he genuinely meant it :

"This is the paragraph in the book that made me think of you. Perhaps given your knowledge and experience you might actually have a great treatment for vascular insufficiency buried in your mind but you just haven't discovered it yet.

While brainstorming works well in many situations,
there are other effective ways to approach ideation.
Sometimes the “expert problem” in brainstorming can
be turned into an advantage. Medical device companies
frequently use a format where they invite in a “key”
physician (thought leader) to visit the company and
lead a working session. While this type of facilitated
discussion may draw on many of the same aspects of
the brainstorming process described in this chapter
(e.g., having different types of people from engineer-
ing, sales and marketing, etc. in attendance), it differs
in one important way. The purpose of these working
sessions is usually to “uncork” the expert’s mind and
stimulate interesting ideas. Unlike a brainstorming
session in which all participants are encouraged to
contribute more equally, in these situations the group
is asymmetrical, with the expert’s ideas being given
the most attention. Despite this important distinction,
the results of such sessions can be effective and the
approach can be successfully employed by inventors,
entrepreneurs, and established device companies."

Either way it made me stop short and take another look at myself.

This happened after I advised my team against considering diabetic foot as a potential candidate in the "cure for osteomyelitis" realm. I've tried so hard before, and always come up short. Op, and re-op and re-op well past the X rays, well past the MRIs - and still everything turns to pus, if not immediately, then a year later. Diabetic foot + osteomyelitis pretty much = amputate to me now.

And yet, once upon a time I remember asking my boss why not bypass very distal obstructions at the ankle? I remember coming back all starry eyed from a conference in australia. He told me he had dreamed of that too, when he was younger, but after numerous failures he didn't even try any more. He told me that I would want to try too, but it was inevitable - there's just no point.

I remember thinking privately - a ha that's what you think. Perhaps things will be different...

And yet here I am now, becoming him.

I emailed the med student back - I hear you, and well, okay. It won't be easy, but why the hell not - let's go for it.

I guess we just forget how to dream after a while... until someone reminds us.

:D :D

:D