Human destructiveness

She is a 45 yr old diabetic with poor circulation to her legs. She is also a smoker. She presented today with two small punched out holes in one lower leg. Smoking in her situation is total madness.

Mrs Jones I want your permission to scare the living daylights out of you?

Why?

Because you know what I am going to tell you already and what you know hasn't changed you. I intend to get in behind your defensive words and shake your core.

Okay

Within a year or two the surgeons will start chopping off bits of your legs and over a year or so work their way up past your knees. By then it will be time to start on your fingers. You are only 45 Mrs Jones and by the time you are fifty you'll be chair bound with painful non healing stumps. I asked her what I had told her. I repeated bits she missed. I looked her in the eye and made sure she heard.

I think she let the image touch her but I doubt it was enough to change anything.




It seems as if folk like her just can not be bothered, that health is just a choice away and so it is. But that choice does not lie within her realm of possibility. It seems so obvious to the rest of us. However, I reckon we all have our 'can't be bothered' aspects. We see those of others and not our own. What's your addiction - it may not be drugs, it may be anxiety, worry, guilt and so on. Whatever it is, it will seem like you don't have a choice. However, when others look in on your world they'll see your addiction, which you don't even see as a problem, as a choice you should change.