Surgery – Corpus

Being Asymmetrical

1 October 2024 Leave a Comment

Katie Brockie

Looking at myself in the mirror who is it,
Who is that lopsided stranger
Washing up and down the shore

Patricia Goedicke, from ‘Now Only One of Us Remains’

In 2023, I had a mastectomy. When I left the hospital, I was given a Dacron-stuffed soft fabric oval pad to use as a temporary prothesis for when I was able to wear bras again. It reminded me of the rolled-up pairs of socks that some girls used to stuff in their bras at high school – and of the other girls talking disparagingly about ‘falsies’. It was a few days until I was brave enough to look at myself in the mirror. When I did, it was an extraordinary feeling. A strip of surgical tape lay across the left side of my chest, which was now … empty. When I looked down, I could see my stomach sticking out. As many women also experience, it was hard enough to love my own body before I had surgery, but now I was wondering if I could love my asymmetrical body. Is it okay to love a scarred, one-breasted body, or should I book myself onto the waiting list for reconstructive surgery, ASAP?
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Prosthetic progress

7 September 2020 3 Comments

Henry Fry

Unidentified WWI soldier with a prosthetic right hand learning to write with his left. Photographs, Collection, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand.

Adjusting to life after war has always been difficult. For amputees, artificial limbs are an essential requirement for attempting to get back a semblance of normality. In 1948, just three years after the Second World War, two University of Otago fifth year medical students, P. J. Dowsett and J. H. Heslop, did their public health dissertation about wartime amputees and aspects of artificial limbs.

Not surprisingly, they found that after the First and the Second World War, the need for prosthetics spiked. Before the Great War, there was little development or focus on artificial limbs. For centuries, the wooden leg was the most common example of what was possible. At the tail end of the First World War, the return of veteran amputees led to a great demand for prosthetic limbs. An estimated 41,000 returning British soldiers required prosthetics. The high demand prompted the introduction of more standardisation in the manufacturing process. During the interwar period, the metal artificial limb started to take over from the traditional wooden leg for the first time. By the Second World War, advances meant that prosthetics had become far more intricate than their basic predecessors.

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#vaginalmesh not #pelvicmesh: Let’s call it what it is nē?

20 July 2020 13 Comments

Iona Winter

Eight weeks post-op, a simple procedure to inject Botox into my pelvic floor and I was done with the pain. During a trip to town to see the GP (again), a 40-minute drive with a tennis ball under my nono, I’d felt a strong urge to scream. The pain was unbearable. After the GP I drove for another hour – my current idea of hell (the driving bit) because everything from my vagina down to my foot goes numb. I worked my shift at the library, and when I got home the bloody fire wouldn’t start. Let’s just say the fire copped an earful. Thankfully I live alone.

Pain (of any kind, I’m thinking laterally here), like anger, is a potent force. Invisible pain does not mean that it’s all in our heads. And while I realise it’s difficult for others who are unable to fix it, just stop with the silencing, please.

Crossing to surgery’s side

7 October 2019 1 Comment

Jane Simpson

Months after a serious accident, despite doing all the prescribed exercises, my right shoulder was getting worse. Simple movements caused sharp pain. Physios continued to hold out the hope of healing for this ‘small’ tear of my rotator cuff. I doubted that it would repair and said I wanted surgery. The path seemed to be blocked.

What I had waited so many months for became imminent at the second appointment with the surgeon. An MRI showed that the rotator cuff damage was much more serious than expected, and so he brought the date of surgery forward by two months. As I passed back through the spacious reception area, its white walls with their innocuous paintings suddenly became huge shadow boards of clamps, hammers, saws and numerous surgical instruments – like the ‘Cut Outs’ series by the New Zealand artist Richard Killeen.

What was I afraid of? Fear of surgery, of it all going wrong? If I were to write a poem about fear, what verbs, metaphors and myths would I use? Could I use synaesthesia and mix the senses up? If so, what was the smell of fear, what was its taste? Metallic? [Read more…] about Crossing to surgery’s side

“With Them Through Hell”

5 November 2018 2 Comments

Sue Wootton

11 November 2018 will mark one hundred years since the official end of the First World War. Over 18,000 New Zealand combatants were killed in the conflict, and many more were wounded or fell ill. Their experiences were so harrowing that most survivors, even years after returning to civilian life, would never speak of what they had endured during the ‘war to end all wars’.

Serving alongside them in that hellish world were the men and women of the New Zealand medical corps. A century on, Anna Roger has written a comprehensive history of this ‘other army’, which was charged, not with ending lives, but with saving them. The result is a rich tribute to the courage and compassion of those who worked “in appalling, perilous conditions and for inhumanely long hours” to alleviate the suffering of others.

First general anaesthetic – the hero’s journey

29 October 2018 Leave a Comment

Chris Todd

It’s my first general anaesthetic. I’m due to go under in 45 minutes. I’m at the threshold of the hero’s journey into the abyss. In this instance, the eight steps of the hero’s journey go like this:

Step 1. Disrobe and Body Paint.

The surgeon comes in and we shake hands. I pull down my pants, exaggerated ‘low-rider’ style, and hitch up my T-shirt to my chest. He has a green marker pen which he uses to draw arrows and lines to indicate my groin hernias, then three shorter lines where he intends to puncture my abdomen. The first of these goes just under my naval (for the camera), the second directly below that to inflate my abdomen with gas so he can see where he’s going (like using a torch under the blankets), and the third (to insert tools through) below the second.

“See you soon.”