September, 2017

Understanding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

25 September 2017 2 Comments

Dr Rosamund Vallings

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (known as ME/CFS) is a complex acquired condition. Sufferers experience a range of debilitating symptoms, including fatigue, and problems with pain, gut function, brain function, immune, cardiac and endocrine systems. Dr Rosamund Vallings has been treating and researching ME/CFS for over 25 years. Here she describes what drew her to this work, and where the research is heading.

I qualified in medicine from the London Hospital Medical College in 1961. This was followed by house surgeon appointments in Plymouth, Devon and the London Hospital. I then set off to New Zealand as a Ship’s Doctor with Port Line, spending some time in NZ, before returning again as Ship’s Doctor to England to marry one of the officers. We settled in England for 2 years and during that time I worked in Family Planning developing an interest in Women’s Health. Then it was back to NZ with our first 2 babies.

We settled in NZ, had a third child, and I initially continued to work in Family Planning and built up a small General Practice focusing on female hormone disorders.

Writing down catastrophe

25 September 2017 4 Comments

Fiona Farrell

In June this year, six years since Christchurch was shaken awake into a new understanding of the city and the geology beneath it, I published a novel. Decline and Fall on Savage Street was prompted by that event, and the years that succeeded it as the city shimmied then settled to a kind of peace, or as close to peace as this country can manage. (There have been a couple of quakes already today; yesterday there were seven, though they have been tiny and distant, barely discernible. A reminder, however, that this is not perhaps the most tranquil place to perch, above the interface of a couple of major tectonic plates.)

Writing about this event and the political and corporate activity it unleashed has been a curious business.

A short history of the smile

25 September 2017 3 Comments

Barbara Brookes

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight” – Phyllis Diller.

But it’s not easy to produce a smile on demand. A smile is a response to something, and therefore hard to manufacture. Yet whenever we are faced with a camera these days, we are expected to smile. It’s great if the camera catches us in a moment of pure spontaneous mirth, but rather excruciating if we have to wait for photographer to compose the shot, our smiles tightening into a kind of rictus. Yet in the current selfie culture, smiling for the camera is almost obligatory.

This wasn’t always the case. Mark Twain apparently once said, “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity, than a silly smile caught and fixed forever.” Perhaps that’s why we still don’t smile for passport photographs. If Facebook is any guide, however, the silly smile is how millions of people will now be remembered.

The matter of teenage sleep … actually

18 September 2017 Leave a Comment

Barbara Galland

I can’t remember where I came across this cartoon, but it’s one that irritates me. The teenage bird with the cool-dude-backwards-cap assumes the stance of a seasoned raconteur. With one deliberate wing gesture, he begins: “Actually” (proclaiming absolute authority on the matter), “my species is not nocturnal: I’m just a teenager”. Of course I’m just assuming he’s a he-bird, but even if he’s a she-bird, it doesn’t matter. The cartoon sends the wrong message. It labels all teenagers as being rebellious on the matter of sleep.

The higher authority, the owl, listens intently, but has no wise offerings.

Let me be a human ‘owl’ for a moment. ‘Sleep’ is my job. Sleep is my passion. I’m a child health sleep researcher, and naturally I sleep. My species is diurnal and I have some wise offerings on the matter of teenage sleep.

A lesson from Africa

18 September 2017 4 Comments

Mary Morwood

It always seems impossible until it is done.” – Nelson Mandela.

“Me, judgmental? Of course not! … that’s how I saw myself until I met Meniswa. I was in Africa, six months into my 2 year physiotherapy assignment with NZ Volunteer Services Abroad.

“Come with me, Mary” said the tireless Xhosa social worker. “I want you on this home visit”. We endured the usual bumpy ride on the potholed Transkei road, and then walked across the fields to reach a house. It looked reasonably comfortable, by Transkei standards. So far so good.

There was no response to our knocks and calls. We wandered around the back of the house, past goats and chickens. We found our client, a 16 year old with severe athetoid cerebral palsy. She was slithering around on a grass mat filthy with flies, chicken droppings and blood from her period. A dilapidated wheelchair was parked nearby. The cheerful chickens were her only company.

[Read more…] about A lesson from Africa

Metaphor and mental illness

18 September 2017 1 Comment

Heather Bauchop

I was meaning to write something about darkness and the health implications of street lights, but I’ve been swept away by Jay Griffiths’ 2016 memoir Tristimania: a diary of manic depression . Having previously read Griffiths’ Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, I had meant to track down more of her writing, but had forgotten. It was a joyous surprise to find Tristimania on the Dunedin Public Library’s Book Bus.

An award-winning non-fiction writer, Griffiths recounts a harrowing year of illness with a prolonged episode of mixed-state hypomania (for which Griffiths prefers to use ‘manic depression’ or the older term ‘tristimania’).

Archives for September 2017