conversations about medicine and life
Julie Woods
Oh Helen Keller, where were you when I needed you and your wise words? Why didn’t I know of your observations of the world when I went blind? You too have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing. But why do their voices loom so large in our minds? If only I knew that sight was of the soul then perhaps my light may have come sooner.
Dr Janine Winters
When I started my career shift from Hospital Medicine to Palliative Medicine in 2004, my mother asked me “Why in the world do you want to work with people who are going to die? That is so depressing.” My answer then and my answer now is the same. “I am a doctor, I already work with people who are dying—and I know it can be done better.”
Sue Wootton
The language of the body is amazing… I couldn’t hear it but the physiotherapist could.” Jenny Powell
Like the ‘disembodied lady’ described by Oliver Sacks, poet and teacher Jenny Powell has lived her life without a sense of body. Confused and frustrated by her inability to feel connected to her joints and her movements, she started to investigate, piecing together a comprehensive picture of her condition. The result is a fascinating and informative book: The Case of the Missing Body (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2016)
Lucy Hunter
June Opie was twenty-three when she contracted polio on her way to England from New Zealand in 1947. She spent two years in a London hospital, where she initially had no friends or family. Against terrible odds, June recovered from full-body paralysis and learned to walk again, albeit on crutches and with both legs in callipers. Her autobiography, Over My Dead Body, was published in 1957. It became an international best-seller in just ten days.
[Read more…] about The inert body alive on the page: June Opie’s Over My Dead Body
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?”
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?”
