For sale: one pair of baby shoes.......never worn.

August 1986. I had graduated two weeks previously, and had driven straight up to Aberdeen, to locum for a chiropractor who went away on holiday for the whole of August. I had family in Aberdeen, and stayed with my grandparents.

One evening, my grandmother said to me that my cousins wife, who worked in a shoe shop had been told by a customer that she had just seen 'the most brilliant chiropractor'. My ears pricked up at this. Back in those days, chiropractors were as rare as hens teeth, and I was the only chiropractor working in that area at the time.

Of course, I knew who the patient was. I had seen her as a new patient that day. I can't even remember what her problem was. What stuck in my mind was a moment during the case history where I had asked her about her medical past, operations in particular. She told me that she had had a pregnancy termination a few months previously. There was a pause in our conversation as I digested this vulnerability that she had just offered up to me. Should I gloss over this, or acknowledge it, I wondered, in my 23yr old naivety. Fortunately I chose the more difficult (to me) path and decided to acknowledge it: 'That must have been.....difficult for you?', I asked, quietly. She nodded, but didn't say more. Our conversation stopped for a while, and I looked at the floor.

40 years later, I can still remember that conversation, although I don't remember anything else about the interaction. I'm sure that clinically it was unremarkable.

She thought I was 'brilliant'. I wasn't, but I'm glad I felt her pain when she gave me a glimpse of her darkest secret.

Image at top by Mon Petit Chou Photography (via Unsplash)

I am a chiropractor and sonographer. I also mentor colleagues to help them become the clinicians that they want to become. Find out more here.