Cutting Chai with Lakshmi Ganapathy is a monthly series of bite-sized interviews with prominent South Asians showcasing their career and personality and celebrating their South Asian Australian identity.
This month we feature DINESH PALIPANA OAM, a senior resident doctor at Gold Coast University Hospital, a lawyer, and co-founder of Doctors With Disabilities Australia. The first quadriplegic doctor to graduate from medical school in QLD, he was the state’s Australian of the Year in 2021 and is co-lead researcher on Griffith University’s BioSpine Project.
Lakshmi Ganapathy: What are some of the beliefs you had about disability before your car accident, and how have they changed since?
Dinesh Palipana OAM: It’s something that didn’t cross my mind.
I mean, I would have seen someone who might be using a wheelchair or who had a disability, but I never thought much more about it after looking at them. Every now and again, I remember thinking, okay, life using a wheelchair could be tough, but that was really the extent of my thought to it.
The accident happened so suddenly; one day I was walking and the next second I wasn’t. It’s been eye-opening because it’s not just the things we see with our eyes…sometimes it’s things that I didn’t imagine or think about – my fingers are affected as well, the skin doesn’t work anymore to control the body temperature, the bladder, all that stuff.
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I think the other thing to highlight is the social challenges that come with it as well. What about getting out into the community? What about employment? What about education? So it’s such a broad thing.
Lakshmi Ganapathy: Why do you think ableism is so entrenched within the medical profession?
Dinesh Palipana OAM: It’s ironic, isn’t it, because I think this is the one area of work that I think should be totally open-minded and inclusive.
I wonder if it’s because of the conservative professions that have been the foundations of medicine…if it’s some of those attitudes and a disconnect between us and the community that we serve that has caused this. We need to start building better relationships with our communities and our patients. I think there’s been a breakdown in [trust], and that’s why we saw during COVID there was a bit of mistrust in health, probably because we don’t reflect the community that we serve.
Lakshmi Ganapathy: How do we make hospitals more accessible?
Dinesh Palipana OAM: I think there are a lot of physical ways that we can change things. It might be a flatter surface, automatic doors…But those things can be done and are relatively easy.
What I have learned is people will always forgive a kind and open attitude, even if the physical environment was not accessible. Let me give you an example – I went bungee jumping earlier this year and there were like 190 stairs to go up. These guys were like, don’t worry, we’re just going to carry you up the stairs. It was one of the most difficult places to access, but because there was a helpful, open-minded attitude, we could make it happen.
So I think sometimes, even in times of physical inaccessibility, with the right attitude, we can open [up] places – attitude matters a lot.
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Lakshmi Ganapathy: The subtitle of your book ‘Stronger’ is ‘how losing everything set me free’. Can you tell me what you mean by this?
Dinesh Palipana OAM: We aspire from childhood to the next thing. When you’re a kid, you want to finish school, then when you finish school, you want to finish your degree, and when you finish your degree, you want a job. Then you want your promotion and your house and your marriage and your car. I think you get to a point where you’re like, what does this all this actually mean?
In my life, I held on to all these things that I thought was important, like material things, thoughts about social status, whatever else. But I realised when I had the car accident, how quickly all that is lost. We’ve seen this in society – people go broke, people get sick, people fall into hard times, then suddenly they have nothing and no one, which is very sad.
When I had the accident, it was hard to let go of the stuff that I had, but then I realised, man, I’m actually free. All these things have been ripped away from me, but now I’m free to start again and build a simpler, purer life.
Lakshmi Ganapathy: What’s something that you’re currently listening to/reading/playing/watching?
Dinesh Palipana OAM: I think life is about getting marginally better every single day, so I make it a point every night to read at least 5 pages of a book and five pages of a medical book so I’m learning something new.
At the moment, I’m reading a book called Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday – Ryan has written a series of books on stoicism and I’ve read all of them. This is the most recent one, it’s about how you cultivate wisdom and experience and mentors and all of that.
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Lakshmi Ganapathy: What’s a word that you like in a South Asian language, and what does it mean?
Dinesh Palipana OAM: I think Amma or Ammi; my mum’s been a really important part of my life. All across the South Asian languages, Ammi is probably very similar. We’re all a result of our mothers. I think our bonds with our mums are so strong in South Asian cultures – the motherland too.
Lakshmi Ganapathy: And finally – Soan Papdi or Papdi Chaat?
Dinesh Palipana OAM: Soan Papdi; I have been known to eat dessert first.
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