Essay - Corpus - Page 17

The language of grief

15 May 2017 1 Comment

Sandra Arnold

Knowing what to say to bereaved parents can be extraordinarily difficult. Language often fails in this context because of unfamiliarity with death, the decline of mourning rituals, and an increasingly secular, urban and mobile society. Language can also fail when we try to describe a bereaved person. Phrases commonly used, such as ‘breaking down’ and ‘losing control’, are those used in describing dysfunctional machinery. Grief is spoken of in the same terms as an illness from which people ‘recover’ and ‘return to normal’.

A woman I am

15 May 2017 2 Comments

Huberta Hellendoorn

A short extract from Huberta Hellendoorn’s recently published memoir, Astride a Fierce Wind (Mākaro Press, 2017).

A few weeks ago I realised that this ageing body could benefit from some repair work and I made an appointment to visit a specialist. Again.

I arrive at the suite of the surgeon. Soft grey-wool carpet on which are arranged deep armchairs in tonings of navy blue. Oh, how I love this luxury. I feel so warm, so pampered. Modernist paintings on the palest of blue walls, framed with just that right amount of grey and chrome.

I’m led into the surgeon’s room. After a series of perfunctory questions I’m told I’ll need a small operation to clear my medical problem. It will mean just one day in hospital. I’m told that I’ll be well looked after and that it will be a day of rest and relaxation. I feel awful. How can I disappoint him? How can I tell him that even one day is too much?

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Karate and health

8 May 2017 Leave a Comment

Bronwyn Dalley

Many of us have been there: it’s after midnight and everyone in the house is asleep, but we’re at our desks reading, thinking, writing. Keep it up for a string of nights and things can get weird. The mind plays tricks and the body turns languid. Perhaps it wasn’t odd that, many nights into revising a manuscript, my body began almost automatically moving from one position to another: I was performing a kata – a formalised pattern of karate movements. I had done Seido Karate for several years, but by the time of this unexpected nocturnal practice I hadn’t trained for five years and thought I’d forgotten everything.

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Keith Macleod: radically rethinking the clinical relationship

8 May 2017 Leave a Comment

Sue Hallwright

University of Otago Medical School, Dunedin

I have strong memories of being taught by Keith Macleod when I was studying medicine at the University of Otago in the 1970s. He had a unique approach to teaching in action. I recall him, for example, discussing the profession of medicine in a tutorial. He challenged our shared view that medicine is all about curing and healing. He mooted that people are dying from the minute that they are born, that every second of every day people are treating their terminal condition by taking their next breath. Only when people fail in their self-treatment and when their friends and families are unable to help them, do people eventually seek help from doctors. On this basis, medicine is a failure-based system and ultimately all people must die, so we must fail with every single patient.

Keith Macleod: a unique and powerful teacher

1 May 2017 1 Comment

Sue Hallwright

My recollections of Keith Macleod date back to the late 1970s when I was studying medicine at the University of Otago. Keith’s views regarding the role of clinical medicine in people’s lives, his focus on patient experience and his methods of teaching all had a major impact on me. All that I learned from Keith in my early medical education has stayed with me and remained relevant over the years.

This was an era in which most doctors and patients tended to view the doctor as the ‘expert’: the person with all of the knowledge about illnesses and how to treat them. The patient’s job was to provide a good history of the condition, make themselves available for examination and investigation, and then, once diagnosed, to follow their doctor’s instructions regarding treatment. As I recall it, the importance of the patients’ expertise, the meaning of their condition in the context of their lives and the limits to medical knowledge and practice were not acknowledged within the medical school curriculum at that time.

Fallout from the Jones Fracture

1 May 2017 1 Comment

Kath Beattie

GP to orthopedic specialist: “Yes, a Jones fracture. At the base of the left foot fifth metatarsel. She’s here with me examining the x ray and swearing…”

True, I did remark, “Oh bother!” (or something similar). After all it was December 10^th, and I was booked to travel to my sister’s 90^th birthday party in Auckland on the 21st, followed by tramping with a niece, then a flight to/from Whakatane to visit my youngest sister… get the picture? And I was being told that the fracture was serious, that the moonboot was to be worn day and night and most importantly the foot was never, never to touch the floor.