The plateau · call recap
Counting the things that are not the scale
11 September 202516 attendedHeld by Ada
The largest plateau call we have had, and a much better-tempered one than the January disaster. I set it up deliberately: everyone brings one thing that changed during a flat stretch that has nothing to do with the number people usually watch. It is a device, and devices can be twee, and this one was not, because the specifics people brought were far too odd to be sentimental.
What people brought
Linnet had got up a fell she had turned back on twice. Florrie can get down onto the floor with her grandchildren and — the part she cared about — get back up without planning it. Wilf's blood pressure medication had been reduced by his GP. Ambrose has started resistance work at sixty-six and can now carry both shopping bags in one trip, which he described as the least glamorous victory available to a man.
Three people brought sleep. Two brought a ring that fits. One brought swimming, after eleven years out of the water, and had to stop talking for a moment.
What came up underneath
That most of them had not told anybody these things, because they did not feel like the point. Several had had reviews where the only thing measured was the thing that had not moved, and had come out of those reviews feeling worse than they went in — while carrying, unmentioned, a fell and a floor and a swimming pool.
Mark, who has been in this circle since the second call, said the sharp thing: he had spent four months treating his own life as a control group. Nobody had asked him about it and he had not volunteered it.
Where we left it
With a small ask, which the room set. Write two of these down before your next review and take them in. Not to argue with your clinician. So that the appointment has more than one axis in it. Two members are going to try it and report back in a fortnight.