Lisa Dick
My son and I stand on the corner of Frederick and Great King Streets in Dunedin. He is wearing seven strings of beads around his neck and holding a blue collection bucket. His necklace is so heavy it makes his neck ache, so he didn’t put it on until we reached our designated spot. The hospital looms above us, blotting light from the pavement below. But, here on our corner, the sun shines.
At 12 years old, my son is confident. He catches two buses to school each day. He’s a house captain. He plays football, futsal, water polo, underwater hockey and field hockey. He learns guitar and drums. He has a dramatic streak that appears when he, his siblings and their cousins put on family shows in the summer. He’s getting tall. His brown hair needs a cut, and his collection of Lynx deodorants clutters up our bathroom drawer. He’s fit, he’s healthy and he’s active. [Read more…] about 499 beads
When you have treatment for cancer, information sometimes comes to you in a sideways fashion and not from the direction you expect. It didn’t seem weird, then, that it was from a newspaper article that I first learnt about the benefits of physical exercise during and after cancer treatment. The article detailed the closure of Expinkt, a gym and exercise programme that had been established by Associate Professor Lynnette Jones, a researcher in the field of Exercise Oncology. Expinkt was run by the University of Otago School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences from 2009 until November 2021 (when funding dried up). During that time, the article said, the programme had treated hundreds of people with cancer, mostly breast cancer survivors. Now it was going to re-establish itself as The Wellness Gym, a not-for-profit in new facilities outside the university.
Many people think of the hospice as a place where people with cancer go to die. Back in 2014, when I frequently walked past the Otago Community Hospice building in Dunedin’s North East Valley on my way home, that was my impression. What a sad place that must be to work, I thought. Although I practically lived on its doorstep, I had only ventured into this daunting place once. My partner had asked me to drop off a gift to a friend who was a hospice inpatient. I agreed, but only to leave it at reception. I didn’t want to go any further, in case I encountered dying people.
Our current global situation with Covid-19 and our nationwide lockdown has reminded me of the many forms that isolation can take. Bullies, health conditions, geographic locations – among other factors – can cause barriers to pop up between us, socially, physically, and mentally. I remember, for example, when fifteen years ago a friend was diagnosed with celiac disease and had to change to a gluten-free diet. Gluten-free food was scarce then, compared to its ready availability in supermarkets today. I imagine that her diagnosis would’ve been isolating, not only in terms of the food she could eat, but also in terms of what her family and friends could understand about her new reality.
As a child, you always see your parents as these invincible super-humans. After all, they did put up with my psychologically traumatic teenage hormones at their peak. Parents want to protect you, they put on a brave face, they try to shelter you from what is dark in life. But sometimes they can’t, and sometimes, it’s important for them not to. When someone you see as so incredibly strong is forcibly made weak by disease, it’s an adjustment, to say the least. Before he got cancer, I had only seen my father fighting for me, and in that battle he was undefeated.