About

The work began in a bed.

Seven years horizontal. Thirty-three doctors. A body that stopped working and a system that told me I was imagining it. I was a paramedic who couldn't walk. A teacher who couldn't sit up. A person who had spent his career helping other people name invisible things, now unable to name what was happening inside his own body.

I eventually diagnosed myself. POTS. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. A real condition. A real explanation. Invisible to everyone who had looked.

Then the part that took longer to learn. Once nobody else was catching it, I stopped catching it too. I did to myself exactly what those doctors did to me. I optimised for output and ignored the signal, until it broke.

So the question was never only about doctors: what does a system measure, and who does it miss?

I've answered it three ways. I built. Fifteen-plus ventures, and Patient in Residence at four health institutions, to create what didn't exist for patients like me. I wrote. Eight books on patient experience, patient communication and what systems miss. And I named a method, Testimony-Based Presence, practised in 27 countries: when one person stops performing, the room changes.

Three idioms for the same question. I walk into those rooms now. And I go first.