Sue Wootton
Corpus: Conversations about medicine and life is ten years old! When Barbara Brookes and I launched this site in May 2016, our idea was to open a space dedicated to kōrero about health and medicine, a ‘digital salon’ that would welcome people from all walks of life to share their ways of knowing about anything related to these concepts. What strikes me, as I browse back through a decade’s worth of stories, is what a vivid picture has emerged on these pages — a tapestry that shows what truly matters to human beings. Each story is a stitch in that tapestry; each piece enriches the overall picture. And I’m delighted to say that the overall picture looks set to continue to grow.
Corpus stories have been written by patients and caregivers; by health professionals (including GPs, nurses, surgeons, dentists, physiotherapists, counsellors, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists); by research scientists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, public health experts and literature scholars; by gardeners, musicians, poets, novelists, singers, artists and dancers. So many ways of thinking about how to sustain ourselves, or how to nourish others, when the chips are down. There is much diversity here, a wealth of insightful commentary from a range of perspectives. Yet one message comes through loud and clear across the board, and it’s that effective medicine involves taking care of every aspect of being human: body and mind, culture and belief, belonging and purpose, creativity and imagination, family, friends and community. [Read more…] about Happy birthday to Corpus!
I’ve often wondered what speciality I’d have chosen, if not haematology. Somehow, I keep looping back to psychiatry, which is odd, as I certainly wasn’t drawn to the discipline as a medical student. And yet, fascinated by the combination of art and science, I’d earned A+s and As in my psychology papers in first-year university. It’s increasingly clear that the mind and body are inextricably entwined, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part. Perhaps, at the time, psychiatry was far too close to home, with too many reminders of my own family’s mental health history – schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and a depression so severe that it ended my brother’s life at 21. 
I have been telling stories for as long as I can remember, but I was nine when I started writing them down. The first one was a blatant plagiarism of a Jacqueline Wilson novel, and after that I never looked back (though I did start coming up with my own ideas). Each story, each poem, was a masterpiece to me, perfect simply because it existed and because I enjoyed making it exist. Writing made me feel competent, powerful, capable of building something from nothing; there was a magic to it that I never found anywhere else. I knew that I would be an author someday, that I was supposed to be one. How could I not?
Nearly everyone wants to know the ‘secret’ to longevity. Several years ago, on his 107th birthday, Jack Coe (at that time the oldest man in New Zealand) declared that the secret was ‘popcorn and beer’. Hastings centenarian Vi Cassin, born in 1924, gave her answer as ‘onions and beer’. I would like to meet her, not only to find out whether she consumes these two items separately or together, but also because she is a pianist. As a pianist myself, I regularly work with retirement village choirs and have become increasingly intrigued by centenarian musicians. Is part of the ‘secret’ to longevity contained in their musicianship?
