Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

Getting What You Want Without Casting Blame

I informed Nurun about two weeks before the end of my contract that I would not be renewing and that I would be going to China. I originally planned to go to China with my family for the second time and I wanted to take my mother places she hadn’t been before, such as Beijing and Shanghai, because her health was not very good at that time. By late 2011, my mother had been suffering for two years from Crohn’s, an autoimmune disease that affects your intestines, basically causing all your intestines to become inflamed so that any food that passes through them is like a knife scraping the insides. She tried surgery and multiple different medications but none of these things worked. It wasn't until I identified the real problem, which was her doctor.

Her doctor was very kind; she was such a kind person it was killing my mom. The problem is she’s not very thorough or accurate; I know this because multiple times when I went, there was this issue. The first time I went was when we were discussing the problem of my mom being severely underweight.  Looking at the x-ray after the surgery, the doctor essentially said, “I think they did the surgery in the wrong place.” I was shocked, so I quickly asked, “How is that possible?” And I thought maybe this is insane because how can you go in and do surgery and cut off the wrong piece?  This is like something out of a horror story. But I said, “Please just look at the x-ray one more time.” And she looked down and said, “Oh, I see, sorry, sorry it was the right place.”  As a doctor, why would you say this out loud unless you were sure? Bad news is going to get the patient's family all worked up. Thankfully my mom doesn’t speak English, so she didn’t hear the doctor say they operated on the wrong spot.  I was the translator and I wanted verification. It was after the doctor said she was mistaken that it dawned on me that my mother had been battling this problem for many years and there’d been no progress.  My mom was at 80 pounds during this visit to the doctor; 40 pounds under the proper weight for her age. I knew at this moment that the doctor was the problem the entire time; no one noticed because she is so kind and it was very difficult to tell her that we need to find another doctor. But, after that incident, I was firm about finding a new doctor. I was certain.

So the next time we went, I demanded that she switch us to a new doctor. The crazy thing was that she didn’t want to because the other doctors, being in the Canadian medical system, probably had too many patients or what not. I learned not to blame people very early on because the moment you start blaming people, they start making excuses; this is actually a technique that Dean Carnegie teaches, not to blame the person because it doesn’t help the situation. They’ll just become defensive and make up excuses. So I put it on the table. I said “We need to transfer doctors,” and she started really looking for ways to make my mom better. And then we finally came to an agreement that they would try one more treatment, a new drug called Humira. And, if that didn’t work, we would go through the transfer of doctors. She was lucky because Humira worked and thanks to that and total parenteral nutrition (TPN), my mom now is at the proper weight and is healthy and happy. Well, not happy, but you get the picture.  That taught me what was important—my mom. My mom and dad, they needed a vacation just like I needed a vacation; I wanted to go and hang out in Asia for a bit.