conversations about medicine and life
Dr Joe Baker
All you need to know about General Practice can be learnt from reading Austen.”
So said Anne, my GP training supervisor. Needless to say when it came to the final exam I fared poorly with the medical emergencies, although I did better with those patients who had complex interpersonal relationship problems.
Beatrice Hale
For the past year or so I have been researching and writing the history of family caregiving. Let me say that in no way can this be a comprehensive piece of work! I have chosen to focus mainly on care of the elderly, since this reflects my professional experience as a social worker.
“It’s just what we do.”[1] This quote opens Tim Cook’s 2007 The History of the Carers’ Movement, which outlines the history of the British organisation now known as Carers UK.[2] But caring for others goes back a long, long time, as Lorna Tilley demonstrates in her fascinating book Theory and Practice in the Bioarcheology of Care. She quotes a number of bioarchaeological authorities who say that most remains of older Neanderthal showed healing, ‘implying that the Neanderthals had achieved a level of societal development where disabled individuals were well cared for by others of the social group’.[3]
Sue Wootton
One day when I was seventeen I woke up in a hospital. The ward was long and echoey. Far away, I saw a nurse’s station with a couple of figures moving behind its glass. Mine was the last bed in a row of identical beds, next to a window. It was a windy, cloudy day. The last thing I remembered it had been evening, and I was at home.
My head was sore and weighty. I closed my eyes. Rather, my eyes closed. The next time I woke it was to my mother’s voice. I heard fear in it despite her attempt at humour. “Oh Susan,” she said, “how could you have an accident in those awful dungarees?”
Dr Jo Oranje
As a New Zealander, it is perfectly conceivable that I might feel pissed off at having to piss off when it pisses down while I’m on the piss at a piss up. And if I’m unexpectedly asked by a medical professional to provide a urine sample, I might retort: “You’re taking the piss!” If my doctor or nurse speaks English as an additional language (EAL) and is unfamiliar with this idiom, she might interpret this literally: “Yes, that’s exactly my intention.” But this assumes the practitioner is aware that ‘piss’, in this context, is a noun. In fact, ‘piss’ is one of those complex English words that can operate in many word categories. In the sentences above, piss has taken roles in verb phrases, noun phrases and an adjectival phrase. I didn’t pluck this one word out of the air (or pull it out of my finger, as my Polish neighbour says).
Huberta Hellendoorn
To communicate does not always mean using spoken words, as the development of sign language shows. But I want to write about our experience with art and non-spoken communication.
In 1962 our daughter, Miriam, was born with Down syndrome. Our feelings of disappointment and sadness were soon replaced by a determination to fill her life (and ours) with challenges that would prepare her for as normal a future as was possible. And she did have that normal life. Although she was born too early to take part in mainstreaming she stood out in all her schooling activities, and, later on, in different employment situations. In 1989 Miriam went to a course at the Mosgiel Abilities Resource Centre to learn independence skills. At the end of the course the teacher asked me, “Did you know Miriam has a talent for painting?”
Dr Louisa Baillie
Just on two years ago I got the phone call I didn’t want, that my dear friend Alison was close to passing away. Would I like to join her family sitting in vigil as she slept? Of course. That was hard to do, though, to walk into her bedroom and see her parents, her husband, her three children, a couple of other friends and a minister seated around her bed, all quietly focused on her. She lay curled up like a child, breathing deeply, seemingly oblivious to my presence. I didn’t know quite what to do. Conversation seemed inane. [Read more…] about Touch. The neglected sense?
