Devon Zuegel
speaker
216 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Devon Zuegel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
This is very out of left field and not related to anything we've been talking about, but it rings true anyway. So a few years ago, I had a really bad hand injury and I won't go into all the details. My life is fine now, but it was one of those things where I ended up having an antibiotic resistant infection and weird stuff ended up happening.
And I just went down very odd parts of the probability tree, had many different surgeries. And the way that the Doctors treated me. I had two doctors in particular, Dr. Mickey and Dr. Bunteck, who are both hand surgeons. And they treated me with so much respect.
And they particularly encouraged my curiosity and made it so that I was part of the decision making process, which I don't think always happens in the medical sphere. And in fact, because it was so unclear what was going on with my hand injury. Dr. Buntik actually asked me, would you be interested in having a conference about your hand? And I was like, what does that mean?
He's like, well, we could bring 12 of the leading hand experts to all talk about your hand injury with you and talk about different possibilities of what could happen and what we think is a likely outcome. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. I would love that. And so we spent a morning having a conference all about my hand. And they really took me seriously, even though I'm not an expert.
They knew that obviously I didn't have the expertise that they had, but also it's my hand and I want it to work. So being given the opportunity to have that experience and to really be taken seriously meant a lot. And honestly, it was just fascinating as well. at no additional cost, as far as I can tell.
My insurance company might think differently, but they just genuinely wanted to make sure that I ended up with the best outcome and that I felt like I was the decision maker with a lot of experts around me.
Yeah, absolutely.
My first reaction is it's almost like a terminal value. So it's kind of hard to explain. This is going to sound a little cheesy, but we only get to live one life and getting to do the most with that time that we can and working on truly interesting things that we care about and pushing ourselves as far as possible in that limited time that we have. I think is really great.
And if I think back a thousand years ago, people's lives were so much more constrained. The possibility for how they could spend their life was quite limited to just making sure that they got enough food and that their children weren't starving. And I think the arc of progress is allowing people to have a broader range of things that they can do.
And broadening the sense of possibility, I think really brings me awe.
So I grew up with a brother with special needs. I still have a brother with special needs. He's five years younger than me. And as a result, I had to grow up pretty quickly because I helped take care of him and love him to death. He's wonderful. And I think the fact that my parents trusted me from a very young age to help take care of him, that was very empowering for me.
And I always appreciated it. I was taken seriously early. And... Being in a position where they'd leave me at home to help take care of him while they had to go run and get groceries, things like that. It just made me feel like my parents believe that I can handle this. And it then made me want to step in those shoes and handle it. So I think that's probably the first that really comes to mind.
They planted the seed really early from the moment we first realized that he was developing differently than most kids. And that was when I was maybe six or seven. But then it just grew from there. And I feel like it wasn't one moment. It was something that we cultivated. And Each time I'd earn a little bit more trust and it would expand from there.
I think it's interesting to compare it to the experience with the doctors who helped me with the hand surgeries. I don't think they would have necessarily behaved that way with every patient because some people... are going to be more difficult or they may not have the curiosity or they might just want to be upset. And I get it. I was in a lot of pain and I was really stressed.
So I had my moments, too. Don't get me wrong. But I think empowerment is something that requires trust. And for someone to empower you, you also have to give them a reason to do so. And it's sort of a give and take. It's not just one person bestowing it upon you.
Thank you, Patrick. This is so fun.
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