conversations about medicine and life
Peter Wells
She has a lived-in face and a voice which speaks of late night music and low lights, a soft husky catch of a voice which always has at its end the suggestion of a laugh. But she’s serious, on the level, is Ronnie.
What’s your level of pain, one to ten?”
Peter, you don’t have to be in pain. Right?”
Peter Wells
Author Peter Wells was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and has found posting on Facebook about his treatment makes the experience easier to bear. He says the writing helps him to sort out things in his mind – ‘a sort of mental housecleaning’ – and the response he gets to the posts makes him feel connected and less alone. ‘In fact,’ he says, ‘it has been remarkably therapeutic.’ Here is one of those posts:
At times I open my eyes and I’m surprised to find I’m in a hospital room. I look around me and adjust. It’s by no means painful or awkward now – it’s just a new kind of normal – and I ask myself how I ended up here.
Doug Lilly
Three years ago my partner asked me to deliver a gift to Carolyn, a friend of hers who was a patient at the Otago Community Hospice. Although I lived only a couple of streets away, I had never entered the building or given it much thought. I assumed it was a very sad place full of people dying of cancer.
Little did I know that within a few months I would be working at the Hospice as Operations Manager. My superficial and narrow understanding of what they did was quickly corrected as I discovered what a wonderful service it is, and how special is the team of staff and volunteers who work there and provide specialist palliative care.
Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early intervention and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psycho-social and spiritual.” (WHO definition 2002)
Sue Wootton
When Petra Kotrotsos was six years old and playing in a park with friends, she fell off a roundabout, landing on her back. The pain didn’t settle, and Petra was taken to the doctor. An x-ray revealed a large tumour (a neuroblastoma) in her chest.
Now 20, Kotrotsos has written a book for children who find themselves faced with the same kind of challenge. I’d Rather Be a Fairy Princess begins with a statement of courage and fortitude:
My name is Petra and I am seven years old. I’ve always wanted to be a fairy princess, but when cancer attacks, you have to fight it. You have to be a warrior.”
[Read more…] about About living with cancer … “I’d Rather Be a Fairy Princess” by Petra Kotrotsos
Jenny Powell
A is for Anxiety
Out of the blue, an insidious private festering was developing in my husband’s bowel; a solitary spread of cells in slow time.
When the blue eventually darkened, the GP recommended tests. The hospital didn’t. The GP demanded. The hospital agreed. It was likely to be an ulcer. All the same, you never know. What is it that you never know? No one says.
An MRI scan was the first test. We arrived early, checked in with the receptionist and sat in the waiting room.
“William Pelvis 10.15”
Koenraad Kuiper
Poems are sneaky but each poem is sneaky in its own way. We could say the same about melanomas. And so, sneakily, just like that, a little volcano on the left arm turns wrist watch into risk watch…
