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
When the government used to own hospital facilities and tourist resorts it was possible to transfer patients between these sites, especially in a time of national emergency, such as the Second World War. An earthquake struck Wellington on on the 24 June 1942, followed by a second on June 26, silencing the chimes of the Wellington post office clock, bringing down chimneys, disrupting the railways and severely damaging the Porirua Mental Hospital. During the second earthquake, a child was snatched by its mother from its bed “which a moment later was crushed under a mass of brickwork”. The 1,477 patients living at the hospital were reported to have remained “surprisingly calm” during the quake but evacuations began immediately because of the extensive damage to the building. Fifty-nine female patients were sent to Sunnyside in Christchurch and 50 to Kingseat in Auckland. After the second earthquake 100 male patients were sent to Stoke in Nelson and 100 to a former Salvation Army Inebriates’ Home on ‘Roto Roa Island’ in the Hauraki Gulf, but more accommodation was urgently required.
Edentulous. I came across this word recently when I was reading about teeth. I’d never heard it before and I said it out loud, playing around with the sound of it, wondering how hard it might be to say it if I were edentulous or “lacking teeth”. My nan was edentulous. She kept her dentures in a glass on the bedside table next to the teasmade. (I don’t know which she did first in the morning, put in her teeth or have a cup of tea.)