We shared a meal in a warzone | Shehan Hettiaratchy

Shehan Hettiaratchy  00:00

And all she kept saying was Dyakuyu, which is thank you, and Ukrainian. And it was like, wow, this is really special.

Holly Newson  00:09

Oh, hey, welcome to kind I'm so glad you're here. I'm Holly, and I'll be chatting to guests about the times people were kind to them and how that changed things. In this episode, you'll hear how kindness within healthcare can be a norm, a relief or a surprise, and maybe all of that at the same time. And what happens when people with very little decide to share what they have? By the way, you're stronger than you think, right? Let's drop you straight in. You're about to hear from Shehan Hettiaratchy, a consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon who is the director of major trauma at one of the busiest trauma centers in London. He's also been a regular and reservist in the British Army for over 20 years. Was deployed to Afghanistan twice, and has worked on surgical missions to Ukraine and Gaza. And he's an author, too, of The Careful Surgeon, and I've really only just scratched the surface there, but Shehan, welcome.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  01:08

Thank you very much.

Holly Newson  01:08

So to start with, what does being kind mean to you?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  01:15

So I think that's a really difficult question to answer, particularly having listened to your podcast and heard some of the brilliant answers your previous guests have given. So I feel like I'm last person on a panel to give an opinion. But I kind of feel, you know, because I've been working in healthcare for all my life, and that's an environment where there is a lot of kindness, a lot of compassion. So when I am thinking about kindness in the setting of, you know, my professional setting, I see it happening every day, and what I see is people putting themselves in someone else's shoes, taking themselves outside of our own experience. And literally, you know, it's more than empathy. It's literally becoming that other person and trying to understand the little things that make a difference to them. And for any of us who's had experience of being unwell or being in hospital, it's a really vulnerable time, and for somebody to do that, to pick up on those small things that make a difference, is really powerful.

Holly Newson  02:12

What do you think the small things are that people are noticing that allow them in that healthcare situation to really understand what someone's going through?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  02:20

So it's really easy, I think, in a professional setting, to kind of see people as numbers or problems or things that need to be fixed, as opposed to people. And the people I work with who are really good at this, they see beyond the actual medical problem, they see the person who's dealing with all of the issues that health can can throw up for us. You know, ask, Is there something I can help you with?

Holly Newson  02:49

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I do think that sometimes overlooked. It's very easy to try and second guess what someone might need when sometimes you just have to ask, even though that feels like, oh, it'd be better if I just knew, yeah.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  03:04

But also, you know, I think people don't ask because they're often scared of the answer, right? Because, you know, you ask the question, yeah, it's going to take you into whole world of pain and problems and and emotional connection. That's one of the things, I think, in healthcare and all of our lives, perhaps we had to ask the question because we're scared of that emotional link that we will be making by because you ask the question, are you okay? You can't then go, Okay, you're not fine. I'm off. You've got to do something, right? You've got to engage. You've got to start that emotional journey with that person.

Holly Newson  03:38

Yeah, even if that just means staying and listening. You've got to be prepared to stay. So each time a guest comes on the show, I also seem to have, I think, of three times people have done something kind for them. So to start off with, I wondered, for this first act of kindness, if you can explain why you were in hospital, but not for work.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  04:02

Yeah, so, I mean, I have to say I had to think long and hard about three reasons or three times. You know, I've been shown kindness, and I don't think I've had a particularly cruel or unpleasant life. But, you know, maybe, maybe I don't know, maybe the nasty things stick in our minds more than the nice things, and that's probably something about how our brains work, and it's clearly not healthy thing, because lots of good things happen to us, right? And we spent more time reflecting on those, perhaps, would be happier in life. So, so for me, this only happened about six, seven years ago. So one of the things that often happens with surgeons is they don't drink enough water, and they're often doing long operations. They get dehydrated, so they're quite prone to kidney stones, right, which I've been told by people are as painful as childbirth. But, you know, I couldn't know no direct and I would never try and convince my wife it was more painful than having four children. But so I was on the way to work, literally on the. Tube, and I started feeling quite bad pain in my, in my, in my, in my tummy. And it started off as a little niggle, and then it got stronger and stronger to a point by the time I arrived at Paddington, where I was getting off, I was kind of, I think I'm going to pass out,

Holly Newson  05:16

Wow. Okay, really, instense

Shehan Hettiaratchy  05:17

Really intense, and just coming and going. So it kind of went, Okay, I'll get to work. And I thought, Okay, this is something. And, you know, as a doctor, you're going like, okay, okay, so this is this, is this? What could it be? And I was kind of thought, Oh no, I think it's, I thought it's kidney stones. I know that's that's not great, that's really painful. Everyone says it's horrible. So I get myself to the a&e department, and one of my most amazing colleagues there, Trish, was there, and she looked after me. And I came in, I remember it wasn't so much. I came in said, Look, Trish, I've got kidney stones. And the first thing she said to me was, Oh, you poor thing. And it was just such a- to cut through all of the kind of a professional activity around working out what's wrong with me, getting bloods done, getting things done, but just so pure human empathy, really, for me to cut through, because at that moment, you know, I just want someone to look after me. And basically what she was saying was, Oh, you poor thing, I'll sort you out. And it was, it was great from that moment on, was I kind of thought, you know, she's got me covered. It's okay. I'm going to be all right. I've got someone looking after me, because every night, again, we need people to look after us, don't me?

Holly Newson  05:18

Yeah. And entering that hospital, having sort of self diagnosed yourself until that moment, were you still in work mode, even though you were sort of going to a&e for yourself?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  05:18

Yeah. I mean, it's really weird, because, you know, I spend most of my life, a lot of my life, in that department. So I was going to the normal place. I was wandering in the Ohio can't say, you know, I'm in absolute agony. So I think until she said that, I hadn't been kind of released from my kind of professional mantra. I think when she said that, I was like, Okay, I'm now becoming a patient, and I'm gonna let somebody else look after me. And it was a real relief to kind of go, You know what? I can stop worrying about us now somebody else is sorting this out for me. I don't need to worry about it anymore.

Holly Newson  05:18

Yeah, that feeling when you just know you're going to be looked after, and you can just kind of release any, any tension of like, oh, it's all on me. Something's going wrong, and someone's just there to catch you. And just be like,

Shehan Hettiaratchy  05:18

yeah, and exactly that, but fact that you know someone had caught me, and it was like, because you know, when you're going into my hospital, my place of work, it's a good hospital. But same time, you kind of wonder who's going to be there, you know, is it going to be someone kind is it going to be, perhaps, one of the other colleagues who might be a little bit more kind of, oh well, you know, just kind of wait your turn. And so to be met by something like that, we was just, you know, but she does that to everyone. It wasn't special to me. You know, she's once people, treats everyone with incredible kindness, and she's renowned for it. And I was just walked in and sort of say, I was like, Oh, thank God.

Holly Newson  05:18

And so, what is it about her that you said that, you know, she's renowned for it. What is it about her that do you think allows her to be able to give people those reassuring words.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  05:52

So she's really good. I mean, she's retired now, but she was really good at her job, so she was on top of a game. So nothing really phased her. She wasn't stressed for any situation. You know, she used to be the doctor on the air ambulance, and she did all the major incidents that you know, we've been involved with in London for last 20 years. None of it phased us. So she was never worried or stressed. And so I think you know that can't that allows you to be in a space where you can emotionally engage with people, because, you know, you're kind of doing the work. It's kind of happening. And you can see beyond the immediate challenge, because you're not finding it challenging to the innovation. Human impact of what's going on, because, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're a doctor, and you're dealing with what I do with trauma, you know, there's a lot of technical stuff when people get injured, but you have to think about, yeah, and you're thinking about, Okay, what, what injuries have they got? What do we need to do? You know, do we need a scan? Do you need an operation? Do we need blood? Divinity. What do they need? And you often forget that there's a person in there for whom this is probably the worst day of their lives. And you know, you need to talk to them. You need to talk to them as a as a person, you know, as another human being who's having a terrible time. And I think that's a really important thing I try and get my teams to realize. So for me, when I walked in that day and she spoke to me just as like a fellow human being, while sorting everything else out in about 20 seconds, I was like, oh, okay, I'm in the right place. You're the right person,

Shehan Hettiaratchy  06:04

Yeah. And so what are you like as a patient?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  06:08

Yeah? I think I'm okay, fingers, I know. I know that the moment you try and start telling people how to do a job, when you're the patient, it goes wrong. So normally, I just can switch into full, I'm just, I'm just a patient. Now you look after me, mode, and that normally relaxes everyone.

Holly Newson  10:18

Okay, once you kind of self diagnosed, you kept the rest of it to yourself, yeah.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  10:22

I mean, I'm not in hospital loads, right? So I have like, you know, broken a few things, and then you had this thing with kidney stones.

Holly Newson  10:29

And so how did that care carry through in terms of that moment when you diagnosed? Obviously, you're still in a lot of pain. What acts of kindness Did you meet along the way?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  10:40

So it's also a really simple thing. So first thing she did, first thing she did was, oh, you notice pain, and sort out your pain. And then one of the healthcare assistants came put a drip in my hand. And again, really kind, you know, I've seen people with drips in Okay, these are simple little, you know, practical things get done. And sometimes they do it quite brutally, you know, it's not because they're trying to be unkind, but they're not thinking about it. And actually, this, this guy came in, put a trip in my hand, which is a bit painful, not totally pleasant, but he did it, you know, really gently, and he talked to me about it into this one doing any and he didn't. And I, and I'm sure he was stressed, because it's another, you know, a colleague and a member of staff, but he just did it, you know, without any kind of fuss, and, you know, in a very reassuring way. And then after that, you know, I got all the treatment, and it was all fine, and everything was was good, but it just kind of, you know, I think if you start off in the right frame of mind, and people are being nice to you, and it's all working out, then the rest of it flows,

Holly Newson  11:41

Yeah, completely.

Holly Newson  11:49

Can you think of a time that someone did something kind for you? It can be anything big or small.

Holly Newson  11:57

My boyfriend got me flowers in the exam. What was the exam? It was a psychology exam. Oh, cool. How did it go? I haven't got the grades back yet, but I thought it went quite well.

Holly Newson  12:07

Oh my gosh. And what were the flowers like?

Holly Newson  12:08

They were really I have a picture of them. They're like, pink and really nice and big and unexpected. Yeah, he when I got home, they were on my bed with, like a teddy next to it was really cute. How did you feel I felt really good, yeah.

Holly Newson  12:32

So moving on to your second act of kindness. Would you tell me what was going on in your family that night?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  12:40

Okay, so this feels like I'd never get out of the hospital. Either at work or socially. So my number three daughter was two at the time, and well, number three child, number two daughter was two at the time, and she'd been unwell with a kind of a cold for about a kind of fluey symptoms for about 10 days. And the problem with doctors is we are terrible parents, and that, you know, we always assume our children are never ill and they're going to be fine and we're not going to take the hospital because it's such a pain. And so, you know, we we and you know, it just, you know, I'm like, I'm amazed any my children survived. But so, you know, we're left. This child's kind of unwell and not getting better. It's got high temperatures, and then she starts getting these really weird kind of red eyes, and both my wife and I looking okay, like, that's, that's weird now. So we were ringing one of our friends who's a colleague at the hospital where my wife works, and she says, Oh, you know, I think you should definitely bring her in. I need to have a look at her. And we like, okay, whatever. We'll bring her in. I'm sure it's on. I'm sure it says, you know, making a fuss about nothing. And so took her in, and we got seen by one of the resident doctors, who said, Oh, she looks fine. Now, once you go home. Then our friend rang us back about an hour later and said, Where are you guys? Are you? Are you in? No, no, we've been seeing such home. It's fine. So okay, hmm, okay, just let me how it goes. Because, you know, I did want to see her. I was okay. So then, you know, about six o'clock in the evening now, and she goes from looking fine to looking more unwell, and we're going home, you know? Well, we've been seen all right, and someone said she was okay. And so guess about 10 o'clock in the evening, she's still looking unwell. Her temperature has gone back up, and we're now feeling pretty uncomfortable, and my wife says, You know what? I think I'll take her back in. And I said, Well, I'll stay with the other children. So she took her back in, and we rang our friend, and by the time we got single process, it was about one o'clock in the morning, and a friend who wasn't on call came in to see. Her made the right diagnosis of this kind of quite obscure disease called Kawasaki disease, right? Which is quite serious. Okay, so it causes inflammation with blood vessels, including the heart blood vessels. So you know, it has potentially life threatening implications, yeah, and you need to start treatment really early. If you get a reveals a treatment for it that kind of stops inflammation and can make it all kind of settle down. And so our friend came in middle of the night, not on call, sees her and says, this what it is. And I'm because she's consultant, right? We start the treatment, and starts the treatment straight away, and she's fine, yeah? But again, it kind of made me realize, wow, there's, there's a, there's something there about, you know, going beyond what you would normally do, yeah? And kindness as part of that, you know, you go beyond you. We are stepping outside our comfort zones. We're doing things we wouldn't normally do sometimes. And for me, that really kind of resonated that, you know, she was really putting our child ahead of everything else.

Holly Newson  16:08

Yeah, and as parents, in that moment, what were you and your wife feeling, kind of before you had the, kind of the diagnosis and but knowing your child was getting increasingly unwell?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  16:21

So you're there, and you know in your head, you're kind of going, I'm sure it's gonna be fine. Sure it's gonna be fine. We just want it all to go away. You just want the child to be you want someone to go and go it's gonna be okay, and make it all go away. And that's kind of what our friend did. She came in and said, this, what it is, this is the treatment. This is gonna make it go away.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  16:44

And again, it was a bit like, you know, when I was unwell, actually having someone just be able to say, Look, stop worrying about this. We've got this. We've got her. We'll sort it out.

Holly Newson  16:57

Yeah, what made your friend? Do you think go at that point in the middle of the night? We're doing this right now?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  17:08

Well, actually, we talked her afterwards, and she said, from the moment we started talking to her at sort of four in the afternoon, she, she thought it could be this, because she's, you know, she's, yeah, she's really good, right? So she, she's thinking, right? Here are 10 things it could be, but number 10 on the list is something that's really bad and it's quite difficult to diagnose. You know, a resident doctor saw it and said, It's fine. And so she's, she was thinking, I need to see this chart because, you know, I've seen enough that I could probably make diagnosis and start the treatment. And I think she's one of those people was once a thought has landed in her head, and it's about a patient, and actually, she does it for all of her patients. Actually, I don't know how she manages it. She needs to prove that it's either right or wrong. So I think she was basically sitting at home thinking about this, yeah, and then I think the moment we rang up, so she's still not right, right? We just need to get her in and sort it out.

Holly Newson  18:08

And when you had that diagnosis for your daughter and you're in the hospital, your wife's in the hospital, how does it feel to kind of start your kid on a treatment that's going to help. But it's a bit like, whoa, didn't know this was going to happen this morning.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  18:26

Yeah I mean, so partially is relieved, yeah, because at least for diagnosis, at least one treatment, yeah, partially is terrified. You know, you're absolutely terrified, because you know, particularly for doctor, you know, you know, you know, the worst case scenario is, and you're there, kind of going, well, you know, you're, it's hope, right? You're just hoping it won't be as bad as you think it might be. And then you start, you know, we're doctors about the same in hospital, like, Googling stuff and, you know, looking up online and getting well, you know, treatment starts within five days, the risk is lower. And we're like, yeah, 12 days treatment starts. After 10 days, the risk of having serious complications are much higher. So we're already going, God, we've already screwed up here, because this kid's been unwell for us two weeks. And we, you know, I think a normal parent who wasn't medical would have been possibly banging in the door sooner. We were kind of thinking, Oh, she's fine. It'd be okay. So there's bit of guilt there as well, but we hadn't really, you know, taken it seriously. But overall, it felt that feeling of glad we got a diagnosis, and glad that means she was on treatment, but really worried about what could happen next,

Holly Newson  19:41

And is there anything that you've taken from that experience of your friend and colleague, kind of, like you said, going above and beyond, that has changed anything that you personally do?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  19:52

Yeah, so it has actually, because, you know, I thought about, you know, that whole kind of process very easy. First have gone do. Stay in bed, to stay in bed, and we'll sort out the morning. Yeah, you know, be eight hours later. It probably would be okay, because, you know, the delay in treatment probably won't make a difference. But actually, with this disease, the clock is ticking. So what that's made me do is a kind of an ethos and a set of principles, and the one, the first one we have, is always put your patient first. So we say to me, if you do what's right for the patient, no one's going to criticize you. And so what she was doing, she was doing absolutely what was right for that patient coming in, make sure the right diagnosis made and the right treatment was started.

Speaker 1  20:44

So last summer, it was incredibly hot day, and I decided to go for a swim at Hampstead pool, and I was lining up for it felt like a long time, and I received an email. Just to give you context, it had been like a really difficult few months for me, and I was waiting to hear some news about a situation, and I was incredibly anxious and stressed, and I ended up getting this email while I was in the line, and it was good news, but because I was very, very distracted, I lost my place in the line, so I had to go back to The beginning of the line. Eventually, I did make it to the front of the line, but unfortunately, by the time I got there, my phone had died, and it was the only way I had of paying to get in, because I didn't have for my cards with me. So I ended up asking the people that worked there if they could charge my phone, and unfortunately they didn't have a charger that fit my phone, and I was just about ready to give up and go home, and the person that had gone in front of me must have heard what we were saying, and she turned back and she said, Oh, I can I pay for you? And I think the instinct is to automatically reject an offer from a stranger, but for some reason that day, I said yes, and she paid for me to get in, and she didn't ask for anything. She just left. And yeah, it was just very kind. And I think because of the situation that I had been dealing with, it was seemed more profound. And yeah, I had a few tears, I will be honest.

Holly Newson  22:32

So moving on to your third story, or stories of kindness, I wondered if you'd start by telling me what these two incidences, these two things, have in common.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  22:45

I think one of the things about, you know, being a surgeon and being a doctor is the ultimate arbiter of whether you've done a good enough job, is your patients and the teams you work with. And you know, if you get it right by them, then you you've done your job. Well, I think that's why, for me, feedback from patients is the most important thing to give me that kind of idea and that evidence that I've been good enough. Yeah. And so both of these are things where patients and other team members have kind of come back and say, listen, thank you for doing your job. So first one I was going to talk about was in Ukraine. Yeah, since March 22 we've been running surgical missions into Ukraine support them, dealing with war casualties. And in July 22 I was in western Ukraine, and we had a guy who had had a leg injury from a shelling incident and basically had a lot of skin missing from the front of his his his lower leg. And the Ukrainians, you know, they knew this leg could be saved, and we really didn't want to do an amputation, yeah, and they knew the operation required was quite a complex one, involving micro surgery and transplanting tissue that they had not done before, and they have enough of the bits of equipment you needed, like an operating microscope, so You can look at things under huge magnification, and particular instruments and things so they remember, we're almost kind of set up in that we basically were taking our wardrobe. I'm going to see lots of different patients work at what needs to be done. And we get taken to see this guy last and like, oh, well, look, this is Alexi. Okay. This is his injury. Oh, yes. What do you think we should do? And I'm there with a colleague, John, and John and I going like so back in the UK, this will be simple. We do this operation. We transplant tissue from one part of his body to another using microsurgery, and it will be fine, relatively straightforward operation, but they've never done this before. Four, it was going to be a challenge. But if we did this, I mean, he was in his 40s, it would give him a leg that would work without much problem for the rest of his life, versus having an amputation in an artificial leg, yeah. So we did it. It was quite emotional in terms of doing an operation, you do routinely, but in very different circumstances, not quite the right equipment. They're all kind of really excited about it. They've got TV crews in. They've got 15 surgeons watching it, because it's not been done before, yeah, but it works. It's all fine. And so after the operation, we come back, and he's a pretty robust, cutting guy. We go, all good. And he goes, Oh, thank you. Thank you. And his wife burst into tears because she's realized it's all gone. Okay, yeah, then the day comes that we're going to leave. So we do every day. We're seeing him for about another week or so, and the day comes we're leaving back to the UK. His wife gives me and John present, we unwrap it, and it's a t shirt, and it's a kind of, you know, I love Ukraine, t shirt, and a shot glass which says, I love Ukraine, you know, type stuff you'd buy, you know, kind of, any kind of, you know, tourist shop, yeah, you know, you coming. But in this context, because she'd given them, because they had nothing, yeah, they come from these their refugees had nothing in every, you know, single, you know, given that every, every kind of bit of currency they had was supporting him to pay for his health care. And, you know, made spent my money on this, yeah. And it was just like, wow. Okay. I was like, You didn't need to do this. And you said, No, we, you know, insurance, we must do this. And all she kept saying was jacket, which is thank you in Ukrainian, and it was like, Wow. This is, you know, just looking Wow. This is really special,

Holly Newson  26:46

Yeah, what did you say in that moment when you received that?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  26:50

It's really hard to- obviously you say thank you. But you know, what can you say? I mean, you know, you kind of, you're aware that, okay, my head, I've done my job, right? Yeah, and it's, you know, I came here to do a certain mission. What Ukraine is doing this? That's what we've done. I've literally done my job. But obviously there's a huge emotional element to that, for them, as a family, for him, as an individual, for and for his wife. And you know, you be and you're, you see that. And you know part, I remember just seeing him lying in my bed and seeing his wife before the operation, thinking, you know what we need to do. We need to help this guy. And so I think I'll come back to that. You know the you know, I think kindness is a really important part of healthcare, and if you're not kind in a situation where people are vulnerable, then I think you're not doing your job well, yeah, but I think it was the circumstance that stuck in my mind, and actually it's interesting. So obviously, you know, you look after people a lot as part it's your job. And I'm sure they're grateful, but actually, it's not often that people give you gifts or, you know, overtly say, You know what, thank you so much for doing that. It's meant a lot. And I'm sure people think it, yeah, really people maybe it's maybe culture as well. We're all bit British, and we don't really do that, do we? So, I mean, I think it's, it's not as common as you might think. We don't expect it as well, right? So it was unexpected as well. It's just, I don't know. It was just felt really, really authentic. And it was, yeah, I mean, it came at the end of a kind of hard two weeks as well for everyone, and it was just, yeah, something different.

Holly Newson  28:46

And something physical that you now take back to the UK and can kind of like live on as part of that moment

Shehan Hettiaratchy  28:55

In something so little, so small, actually made the whole mission worthwhile. Yeah, because almost encapsulation. Why have we gone to try and help them to get you know that as a kind of really heartfelt moment of gratitude felt really special,

Holly Newson  29:14

Yeah. And we mentioned, this was two stories. So tell me about what happened in Gaza.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  29:21

So, yeah, this was going back almost two years now, when we did our first mission to Gaza. And obviously, you know, it's a difficult situation to opportunity to work in, and it was, you know, really complicated, lots of stuff going on, very difficult, quite fraught. And we've been kind of really working really hard for about two weeks without much of a break. And it's obviously quite high pressure, really intense, and there's not a lot of joy in what was going on. It's all pretty unpleasant. I. Yeah, and we'd been out as a surgical team, four of us away from our kind of guest house where we were based for about three days, and had been a time when, you know, the food going into hospital working was a bit erratic, and had a lot of, you know, rest, and we were being pulled out before going to another place. And I remember just getting back to our guest house and just being really exhausted and quite, you know, like, how on earth, you know, keep going and do do the next day. And one of the guys who who was working with us as driver. Was a chef. He said, I made this really, you know, amazing meal. And, yeah, I must cook, if you cook it for you, before you left, before you leave, and we're like, there's no food anywhere. You can't you can't get meat. You can't get lamb, you know, yeah, great, yeah, next time, maybe. But somehow they got it, and they cooked this special meal, yeah, for us, because they knew we are three days they hadn't seen much of us. You know, it'd been difficult. And it's like, I mean, I can't what's called now, but it's like a biryani, where you have basically the rice and the lamb cooked in and they made it into a big celebration, and we have this most amazing meal, this kind of, you know, literally mouth watering, you know, tenderly cooked lamb with rice. And it was really, it was, it was just a moment of joy, because for them, was a big deal, yeah, you know, they were already been happy and laughing and singing, and we were all kind of, you know, just amazed by his food. And it was just, you know, a moment like just a 2030, minute moment of pure release and joy in the middle of a really dark time in a really dark place. And I think for all of us girls, you know, we were coming and going. They were living there full time. I think for all of us, it was just, you know, a really special moment where we could all just sit down, share a meal, share good food, chat, laugh, talk. It was almost like something we kind of dreamt of was gonna happen, and then it happened, and you could see how much, how excited they were to share this food with us, and how proud they were of it. Again, it was a bit like getting the gift in Ukraine. You know? It was basically their way of saying, well, thank you. Yeah.

Holly Newson  32:35

And so you said you hadn't really eaten very much, up to this point. So what had you been like living on for the last-?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  32:42

So we had our own kind of rations and things. So we have these kind of, you know, ready meals and things like that. We haven't had any fresh food for about in a couple weeks,

Holly Newson  32:50

Right so this was even more special because of that.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  32:54

Yeah, absolutely.

Holly Newson  32:55

And what, what was it like to then have this, like, quote, unquote, normal moment, when that was-?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  33:01

I was gonna say, you know, the fact that in that quite extraordinary kind of set of circumstances, you're sitting down, breaking bread and eating as you would do, yeah, anywhere else, just felt such a nice way to just, just to remind yourself that, You know, in this really bizarre situation you're in, whether you know, middle of a war zone stuff going on, actually just sitting down eating and sharing bread and, you know, talking, just have that moment of just being normal, taking yourself out of that environment, and going, yeah, we're just going to be a group of people having a having a meal, rather than a Whole lot of humanitarian workers middle of a war zone trying to try to get stuff done.

Holly Newson  33:45

Yeah, yeah. And on that note, what is the kindest thing you've ever done for yourself?

Shehan Hettiaratchy  33:52

Yeah, I've been thinking about this. I know that's a question, and I think this might sound, might sound bit weird. I think the kindest thing I've done was, about eight years ago, I got given a life coach by the NHS to make sure I was kind of performing correctly. Because, you know, they gave it to their kind of team leaders, and she said, You need to keep give yourself permission to switch off from work and enjoy your life outside work. And so that's what I do. And she allowed me to, kind of, to frame it in a way that, you know, make you a better, better doctor. So I was like, great. I'm gonna, like, you know, have Friday night off and hang out with my family and kind of, you know, cook and drink some wine and sing some songs. And that's going to make me a better doctor, great. So I think that's probably the kindest thing I've done, because it it often doesn't get done. I mean, I see people who just don't switch off from work, yeah. And I think, you know, give me yourself permission to leave work at work is important.

Holly Newson  34:55

Was that reframing almost all you needed - just someone to say, you need to allow yourself permission, and it will make you a better doctor.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  35:05

Yeah, I needed to hear from someone else, right? Because, you know, in my head, I'll be like, I keep doing this, I keep doing this, I keep doing this. And it needed something to kind of go yes, but if you just stopped give sort of break, you be more effective and more efficient when you go back to it.

Holly Newson  35:24

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I want to say a massive thank you for coming in your book, The Careful Surgeon is a beautiful read. I cried many times. I am a crier, so maybe that's not surprising, but I think lots of people probably might shed a tear it, but the way you the way you describe your profession, your own experiences and your patience, I think, is wonderful.

Shehan Hettiaratchy  35:49

That's really kind. Thank you very much.

Music  35:52

Hey, hold on. I'll stay here till it goes.

Holly Newson  35:59

Thank you so much for listening. You being here and your support means so much to me. Shahan's stories make me think that maybe sometimes we just all need to be looked after, and maybe if we all look after each other, that's possible. This episode is dedicated to anyone who's conveyed their gratitude, perhaps just when you needed to hear it, maybe share the episode with one of those people in your life, or someone else who might enjoy it. I would also love to hear a story from you about a time someone was kind to you. So sen d in a voice note at kindpodcast.com or email me holly@kindpodcast.com and I will feature some of the stories on the show. If you like the show, hit, subscribe, hit, follow, give it a rating, a review, it helps me a lot. It was great to spend time with you. Speak soon.

Music  37:01

Dream on and let your heart unfold.