Progress

GW was here today. He had a stroke last year. It left him with almost no deficits. However, it did leave him with the determination to stop smoking. He hasn't had a cigarette for nine months. Sometimes, people stop smoking. I'm not sure that it's because of anything I did or didn't do. I try, of course, to help people to stop smoking. I'm pretty sure that the stroke is really the thing that got him to do it. Strokes have a way of being very persuasive. They are even more persuasive than doctors. Anyway, it doesn't really matter what got him to stop it. He did it. It's inspiring and it makes the people who practice at medicine happy. We win little battles in medicine.
Well, anyway, GW tells me that he has purchased a treadmill. I suspect that the next time I see him he's going to tell me that he exercises. I did tell him that would be good for his health. His stroke told him the same thing, so that's two of us working together on the project. I asked him to go on it for five minutes a day. This is a great exercise program. It's great becuse it's manageable. Sometimes people want to have these giant undertakings. Nature isn't like that. It works slowly. It makes progress one step at a time. It's kind of similar to the practice of medicine: every once in a while there is a small success. Then we have to remember that it isn't that one person out of the twenty or thirty or forty (in some cases) patients that we see who is doing well. It's one person who has had a major change in their life. Someone's life has changed. There isn't any more than that can happen. That's progress.