conversations about medicine and life
Iona Winter
Tīmata
I think it’s fair to say that the majority of us who experience on-going pain will seek relief from medical practitioners. Four years of repeat presentations in excruciating pain, to GPs and emergency departments, and the medical profession were unable to diagnose my son. Being a skinny young Māori musician, they labelled him a ‘drug seeker’ instead.
When someone doesn’t fit into a prescribed box, shouldn’t you look further?
Savannah Adams
Towards the end of May, after months of organising, I was part of a group of second and third year Otago University medical students who had the pleasure of bringing to life the 2017 Dunedin Teddy Bear Hospital. The hospital runs for a week and culminates with a Community Day on the final Saturday. It gives children, mostly aged 3 to 7, the chance to engage with a simulated healthcare environment, but in this case with the wonderful moral support of a best friend – their teddy.
John Hale
I write a weekly column, WordWays, in the Otago Daily Times newspaper, in which I look at language matters, very broadly conceived. Articles range from the history and grammar and wordstock of English, to its family of languages and beyond, to the purposes of speaking and writing in it, and the rights and wrongs of spelling, pronunciation, grammar, syntax, you name it. I return whenever possible to the best exemplars of our language, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens — the giants of English expression.
Recently someone described me as a “word-surgeon”. This prompted me to examine her metaphor. I dissect words, and study their anatomy. I work out how language ticks and sometimes I sound like a GP when asked for advice on usage. But, a word-surgeon?
Sue Wootton
Recently I talked at the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival as part of a panel of health practitioners who write. Called Word Balm, our session set out to explore what language contributes to the practice of medicine. At the end of a wide-ranging conversation, chair Barbara Brookes called for questions from the audience. A woman raised her hand.
This is all very well,” she said, “but how come my GP looks at the computer screen, not at me, throughout the consultation?”
Tui Bevin
I can save lives even though I’ll never perform heart surgery or discover a cure for cancer.
Four years ago I discovered my perfect volunteer job: plasma donor. My blood group was suitable, I’m not too skinny and I like being waited on with cups of tea while I have nothing more important to do for three quarters of an hour than putting my feet up and reading. As community service goes, donating plasma is no hardship, if you don’t mind being jabbed and weighed regularly.
Beatrice Hale
‘Care’ can be a misnomer. It should mean compassion, love, looking after, affection. All the positives in one word.
But it doesn’t.
My great-aunt, Georgina, lived for many years in The Mitchell Hospital, a nineteenth century Presbyterian Church supported ‘sheltered care’ facility. It was located on The Chanonry, the street which had grown up beside St Machar’s Cathedral in Old Aberdeen, a once independent township with a history of more than 1,000 years, and with many finds dating from about 4000 BC.
