conversations about medicine and life

“In the Night Kitchen”: an allegory for the patient experience?

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Emily Duncan

Did you ever hear of Mickey, how he … fell through the dark, out of his clothes past the moon and his mama and papa sleeping tight into the light of the night kitchen?”

Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen is one of those masterpieces I revisit in adulthood. Its rhythm and phrasing were tattooed on my young mind. There’s a recording of the text by the late actor James Gandolfini. Even though it was only a few years ago that I heard this, and I’m a Gandolfini fan, the petulant child in my wanted to protest, “You’re reading it all wrong!”

The appeal of In the Night Kitchen isn’t merely sentimental whimsy, but Sendak’s complicit understanding of what our parents wouldn’t admit. He encourages us to embrace the (unspoken) fear of night-time and face uncanny and surreal happenings in the dark.

Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what’s real and what’s not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.”  Bernard Holland.

I think of the book when in hospital. Suspended in insomnia in a seventh floor isolation room, looking over the ‘night kitchen’ of Dunedin North. Like Mickey meeting the bakers, I’m alert to the labour that continues under focused beams of light while most of us sleep. There’s that that must go on. And fear. Hospital is discomforting no matter your age, so I ask: could In the Night Kitchen be read as an allegory for the patient experience?

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Headcase: on representing concussion in poetry

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Claire Lacey

I thought I understood concussion. I had played contact sports my whole life, after all, complete with my fair share of bumps to the head. A few begrudging days of rest and I was always raring to get back to the game. Until the time that I wasn’t.

My last concussion four years ago was a life-altering event. In the weeks following that concussion, I was confused, disoriented, unable to read or write, cook a meal, or even walk properly. I had a severe and constant headache, and my room wouldn’t stop spinning. It was like the world’s worst hangover that just wouldn’t quit. The pain kept me from sleeping, my eyes couldn’t track properly, I had left side weakness, my emotions were all over the place, and even my menstrual cycle became erratic. As my rehabilitation stretched on and on, I realised I was no longer capable of performing my fun, frenetic job coaching at a gym, and my dreams of playing roller derby for Team Canada were over. I continue to cope with the effects that the concussion and its recovery process have had on my body and my ambitions.

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Poetry: “a long document about the species”

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Yoram Barak

Yoram Barak is a judge for the poetry competition Changing Minds: Memories Lost and Found, organised by the Dunedin Public Libraries and the Neurological Foundation of NZ.  Find details on how to enter here. 

I became aware of the importance of poetry through American poet Sharon Old’s poem, “Back Rub”. Originally published in her 1992 collection, The Father, the poem was reprinted in a special edition of The Lancet focused on Literature and Ageing. The poem chronicles the poet’s father’s dying, as well as her own process of acceptance and healing as she moves with him to his death and beyond.

In my work as a psychogeriatrician I often witness patients, caregivers, families and communities struggling through the journey of dementia as they are faced with the daunting loss of memory. Can poetry help us along that journey?

The loss of memories is experienced as the loss of “I”, of the core element of “self.” We grasp our sense of individual self and, in most Western cultures, push away the true meaning of impermanence. As dementia takes its toll we experience the impermanence of our memories and for most of us this is a horrifying insight. Poetry as a truly heroic attempt to capture the human condition is a major art form that can help transform the horrifying into the empathic.

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“Grandma”: a story

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Georgia MacKenzie

Spending time with her grandkids was one of Barbara’s favourite activities. And so her heart swelled with love, as she glanced in her rear view mirror, to see four pairs of eyes and four small faces grinning back at her.

“All belted up?”

“Yes!”

They sat two-by-two, with the two youngest in the front tier and the two eldest at the back. Two sets of fairy wings. One tutu. One pirate sword.

They pulled out of the driveway and off into the streets, zipping through the lines of traffic, off swiftly to their destination. Off to try another café.

Grandma might not have been the most athletic, or the most agile, but she definitely came close to being the most wise. Her house was filled floor to ceiling with piles upon piles of books. And oh how she loved those books. Filled with adventures and romance and the collective wisdom of so many authors. Wisps of spiderweb blurred the line between book and floor. But if you dared to move one, she would know.

“There’s a system. Don’t mess with the system.”

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“I’m on my way, Nan”: a story

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Drew Davey

Ngaia has come home.

“Nan first,” she says. “I’m on my way, Nan”

She has thick waves of hair, naturally parted. Her eyes are as dark as the soil that she walks on, oblivious to the million pieces that shatter underneath her every step. A forgotten smile paints itself on her freckled face, rose-pink lips stretching to each corner, forming a number of creases on either side and an indentation on the right side of her cheek. A smile that was lost for so many years. A smile that should’ve come sooner. Regret sinks in.

Before she knows it, she’s at the river. It seems to have carved its way through the greenery even more deeply than she had remembered. She offers a reflection to the towering giants that sit along its bank. They hug the earth in such a way that they can move their limbs in every direction, picking and choosing to let the sun in. It’s like a game to them. A rustling against one another that resonates all through the forest. A welcome back performance. Just for her.

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