conversations about medicine and life

A rhinestone cowboy in the waiting room

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Sue Wootton

waiting roomFrom memory, for memory, and in memory.

I used to have a physiotherapy clinic in central Dunedin. One Friday evening I farewelled my final patient and began to tidy up before heading home. It had been a busy week and I was exhausted. Already mentally off-duty, I wandered into the waiting room to stack the magazines, and to my surprise and annoyance found two men sitting there. In an American drawl, one of them said, “My friend here needs an appointment.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but the clinic is closed.”

The man persisted. “This is very important,” he said. “He needs an appointment now.”

I glanced at the friend. He was certainly holding himself rigidly, as if in pain. But the very idea of treating one more patient that day was too much for me. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, “but I am closing now.”

The man amped up his appeal. It’s urgent; it’s necessary; it has to be done and you have to do it.

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Takotsubo cardiomyopathy – and a little art with our medicine

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Dr Cindy Towns

Tako tsuboTakotsubo cardiomyopathy is thought to account for 1-2 percent of acute coronary syndromes (ACS),  ACS being medicalese for what most people would call ‘heart attacks’.

Takotsubo as a diagnosis got its name from a Japanese Octopus pot which looks a little like the Takotsubo heart on echocardiography (essentially an ultrasound). Takotsubo has some more creative synonyms, including  acute stress cardiomyopathy, broken heart syndrome and ‘scared to death’. It mimics a traditional heart attack but is not due to coronary artery disease. Rather, the structure of the heart balloons in places. Classically, physically or emotionally distressing events precede the presentation, but the exact mechanism of the condition remains speculative. It has been associated with earthquakes in both Japan and New Zealand.

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There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in

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Max Reid

This post was originally written late on Friday 11th November 2016, after a week of struggling to come to terms with the American election result, only to hear that afternoon of the death of poet/songwriter/musician Leonard Cohen. Adjusting to that news with a glass of wine at the ready, and Leonard’s London Concert double album playing loud enough to send the cat and dog scampering for cover, the post originally began, “Just when you thought events in the world couldn’t get any worse … we hear news that Leonard Cohen has died…”

“Anthem” Leonard Cohen, Auckland 21 December 2013 (his last concert)

Well, events in the world invariably can and do get worse, and sometimes a wee bit close to home. Within little more than 48 hours North Canterbury and Wellington had been rocked by a series of devastating earthquakes.

So this post, which was originally drafted as something of a tribute to Leonard Cohen, now serves as much as a tribute to people of Kaikoura and the surrounding areas – as they wrestle to find meaning and hope in the midst of what for them is, in so many ways, a broken world.

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The Gospel of Singing

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Chris Nichol

Gospel singersLast week we went to church, Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in New Orleans, to be precise. While we were there we witnessed, and took part in, some transformative singing. The experience was something like this.

More learned people than me would find ways to explain the power of this kind of participative performance in psychological or chemical terms. They’d probably be right. But they’d also have missed the point. The point has to do with exhilaration, an elation that transported some people and will serve to sustain others through the coming week.

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