The blessing in disguise

Quite often we experience setbacks that seem not fair at all. But quite often too, if years later we look back at the setbacks, they seemed to be necessary events for something better to happen. Here I share not a personal example, but an experience about a surgeon who did not complete his contract. 

Our university hospital is located in a rural area of Malaysia. A few years ago we were so lucky to get an Italian Pediatric cardiac surgeon (a surgeon performing heart operations on children) who was very skilled. Within a year, he performed over a hundred complex surgeries on hearts of children and the mortality rate was lower than that of well established centers in the most developed nations. 

The setback, we experienced was that his wife could not get used to the place where we are located and a family crisis forced our superbly skilled surgeon to break off his three-year contract after just more than a year. At that moment we felt pity for our patients, born with heart problems, since that would mean that we had again to send such patients to a far away center where the waiting list was sometimes long. The safety of the patients with the most severe heart problems was again compromised to a certain extent. 

But what happened then? Our lovely Italian surgeon made arrangements with a charity organization to get a whole team of very well trained staff involved in cardiac surgery for children to come over to our place, up to three times per year. So, on these occasions, many of patients received their very much needed surgery, and our very own team of staff involved in these procedures, has had the benefits over the years to learn and keep learning new skills so that now our own team can perform quite a number of procedures by themselves and the learning process is still ongoing after more than 6 years. 

So what happened more than 6 years ago, while definitely a serious setback at the moment, has turned out not too bad in the long run. 

Many times, in the moment of a setback we cannot see what will happen next. If you get despondent or very depressed after a major setback, think about the high likelihood that within a few years time, you will look back and see how the doors closed, resulted in new opportunities, new open doors to make the situation better. :)