conversations about medicine and life

Archives for August 2018

What’s cooking in physiology research: “Towards safer births”

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Shalini Kumar

cartoonOn Tuesday morning I was sitting at my desk working on this article, struggling to put my research into comprehensible sentences by avoiding any scientific jargon that would drive my potential reader(s) away. That was when I came across this cartoon. A pregnant woman is putting on a brave face, saying that her pregnancy is going “just fine”, when the truth is nowhere close! Her thought bubble precisely sums up everything a pregnant woman is most likely to face during those precious nine months of her pregnancy. Although I was spared the varicose veins, thank God!

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And then … a story of caregiving and poetry

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Benita Helen Kape

Pat & Benita 40th anniversary (1993)
Benita and Pat on their 40th wedding anniversary, three years prior to Pat’s operation.

It all began when my husband Pat, always a keen sportsman, had difficulty walking off the course one morning after a round of golf with his mates. Within a week we were in Auckland Hospital and Pat was in the process of recovering from a major spinal operation. This was a school of learning neither of us ever for a moment thought we would have to face. Both of us were healthy, even seeming young for our age. Pat had been retired for two or three years, and I had only a few years of work ahead of me before I would join him.

Things didn’t go well; the operation took longer than expected. Pat was cheerful, a tone that wavered little until much later. He was a man who saw the best in people. Bravely he struggled with rehabilitation, and we returned to Gisborne. Several days later, he became seriously ill. Meningitis was managed and contended with. We are forever grateful to all the doctors, nurses and agencies involved in his care. [Read more…]

Speaking human

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Sue Wootton

National Poetry Day 2018Billed as a “one day extravaganza of poetry”, New Zealand’s National Poetry Day happens annually on the fourth Friday of August. Every year it seems to get a little stronger, a little more extravagant, with poetry-related events happening in communities all over the country – and beyond. This year, for example, Edinburgh, Berlin and Spain were also involved in celebrating the art of poetry Aotearoa-style.

One way or another, thousands of people from all walks of life were exposed to a dose of the poetry bug last Friday. I hope it’s contagious. I hope it spreads.

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Knitting an anatomy of loss

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Michele Beevors

The Wreck of Hope
After Stubbs, The Wreck of Hope, by Michele Beevors, at The Forrester Gallery, Oamaru, New Zealand 2014

As adults we must all at some point endure grief, although the loss of a loved one affects each of us differently. For some people knitting can provide a lifeline that helps to process loss, a mechanism by which the knitter can deal with overwhelming sadness, and a way to mark off the time it takes to heal. This was my experience. Knitting provided me with a safety net and a way of reconstructing my life, a turn from the personal space of grief to the political realm of art.

Knitting carries with it the legacy of care (for it takes time to knit by hand), patience, empathy and love. Hundreds of knitting patterns have been passed down through generations, one to the next. Knitting can be a powerful metaphor for sustainability, continuity and remembrance, and also for loss.

I began by knitting a single human skeleton, and went on from there to knit a skeleton of a horse (a memory of a school museum visit), then a snake, a dolphin, kangaroos, emu, frogs and children. Thirteen years later, I am still knitting, and the work is ever more urgent.

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Robot counsellors: how do you feel about that?

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Julia Wells

robotArtificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. Google maps. Amazon recommendations. Netflix’s top picks for you. Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant. Uber arrival time recommendations. However you feel about AI, most of us rely on it these days for something, whether it is picking our movies, helping us find where we want to go, or communicating with our smartphones via voice commands. But would you get therapy from a robot?

Counselling by AI sounds like something out of science fiction, but it’s closer than you might think.

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