Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Time-jumping: facing dementia and death

1 July 2019 5 Comments

Samantha Montgomerie

We like to think of time as linear. Seconds building on seconds, forming the minutes, hours and days that track the path of our lives. Dementia and death fracture this line.

Time jumps.

My terminally ill father slipped into dementia in his final months. He suffered a recurring delusion that he could travel back in time.

“A jumper.”

His wide eyes would shine with his conviction. He would arrive at some train station back in time – naked, cold, and anxious about finding his way home. He would struggle through the night, trying to track back, wandering the corridors to find the right path home. We felt helpless in our inability to calm him. At times it was easier to bring the jersey he asked for, to warm him as he faced snow flurries in 1930s France.

Medical musicians: the New Zealand Doctors’ Orchestra

17 June 2019 1 Comment

Tim Wilkinson

The New Zealand Doctors’ Orchestra is playing at the Dunedin Town Hall on Sunday 23 June at 2pm, with all proceeds from ticket sales going to the Otago Community Hospice. Medical musician and NZDO co-founder, Tim Wilkinson, talks about how the orchestra came to be:

The New Zealand Doctors’ Orchestra is one of several orchestras around the world made up of medical musicians. There is an Australian Doctors’ Orchestra, a European Doctors’ Orchestra and a World Doctors’ Orchestra. There are also many local medical orchestras, for example in Christchurch, Auckland and Melbourne. The New Zealand Doctors’ Orchestra (NZDO) gave its first concert in 2012. Since then, the NZDO has given annual concerts in various parts of New Zealand.

The orchestra was founded by myself, my wife Lynette Murdoch (a GP and teacher for Otago University), and our son Tom, a medical registrar. I play double bass, Lynette plays violin and Tom plays trumpet. We decided to form a national doctors’ orchestra for several reasons. There are many doctors who are very able and/or keen musicians, yet sometimes the pressures of work mean their musical talents are not realised. The NZDO provides Kiwi medical musicians an opportunity to play in a high quality national orchestra, encourages collegiality and enhances work-life balance.

Jack the therapy dog: his final visit

17 June 2019 13 Comments

Joanne O’Carroll-McKellar

This is the second story about Jack the therapy dog on Corpus. Read Joanne O’Carroll-McKellar’s earlier piece here: Therapy dog: Jack and the SPCA Dog Squad.

Jack ran out of the front door and slipped on the wet step. He landed heavily on his left front leg. Next morning we visited a rest home and hospital for our monthly SPCA Dog Squad visit. I noticed a lump on his leg. He didn’t seem to be too perturbed and was his usual caring self with the residents. However, I wasn’t happy about his leg. We went to the vet. The initial diagnose was arthritis. An x-ray was scheduled, then a biopsy ordered. The result: osteosarcoma. Bone cancer … what a shock. He was far too young. Bone cancer is very aggressive in dogs and they can die within a very short space of time.

Thankfully Jack didn’t appear to have much pain. The decision was made not to intervene too much medically and that, keeping in mind his needs, he would live as normal life as possible. He became my world. A planned trip away was cancelled.

Jack was retired from the Dog Squad, but we still filled in if other volunteers were unable to be there. He missed his work, as did I. We both enjoyed visiting the residents in various rest homes.

The tumour on Jack’s leg grew to the size of a golf ball. He was now favouring his leg a little. His daily medication became a game of what would get the medicine down … paté or a slice of saveloy.
[Read more…] about Jack the therapy dog: his final visit

Every morning, so far, I’m alive

3 June 2019 Leave a Comment

Chris Prentice

Professor Wendy Parkins was professor of literature at Kent University in the UK before returning recently to New Zealand. Her newly published memoir, Every morning, so far, I’m alive, offers an intimate and honest exploration of living with depression, phobias and OCD, and how these conditions have affected her in personal, professional, family, and social life. The title comes from American poet Mary Oliver’s 1986 poem, “Landscape”, and is a resonant epigraph for Wendy’s story. Her book is a gift to those who might find support in recognising shared or similar struggles, and at the same time to those who’ll appreciate its broader concerns with how to live in the world, and to live well. It’s also about how to place ourselves in the world, and how place shapes our ‘selves.’

Parkins’ interest in everyday life — in how people live — had informed her earlier academic cultural studies book, Slow Living (2006), co-written with Geoffrey Craig, about the Slow Food movement. They refer to slow living as an “attempt to live in the present in a meaningful, sustainable, thoughtful and pleasurable way”; and to “slow arts of the self” as processes whereby “we can ‘desanctify’ parts of our self-understanding”. In Every morning, so far, I’m alive, the process of ‘desanctifying’ self-knowledge isn’t an intellectual enterprise, or a conscious life-style choice, but an intimate challenge.

Nurse Adelaide Hicks: a remarkable life

3 June 2019 10 Comments

Robert McAllister

Adelaide Martens was born in London in 1845, the daughter of a sugar baker. There is little known of her early years, but when she was 17 she decided to emigrate to the antipodes. She obtained work as a stewardess and sailed to Australia, then on to New Zealand. While working as a stewardess on coastal boats between Invercargill and Christchurch she met Henry Hicks, a cook and steward on the same ship. His mother was English, and his father a freed Afro-American slave. Adelaide and Henry were married in Invercargill and moved to Dunedin, to live in Leith Street.

Henry continued his work on coastal boats and Adelaide obtained domestic work. In 1884 they moved to Mosgiel where Henry worked as a woodsman in the Big Bush. They had nine children, and when the youngest was still a toddler, Henry was kicked by his horse. He died from internal hemorrhage, leaving Adelaide with a large family and no certain work. At the time of Henry’s death they were living in a small house on the edge of the bush near the Silver Stream, and when this stream flooded she put the smaller children on the kitchen table to protect them from drowning. This experience encouraged her to shift into Mosgiel and higher ground.

A book launch – and a re-launch

3 June 2019 3 Comments

Grace Carlyle

“You have a lot left in you,” said the bartender as I left. “I can tell.”

It was a nice parting gift from someone who’d been a stranger an hour or so before. I’m not in the habit of frequenting bars but, needing to fill in a couple of hours before a book launch and accompanying poetry reading, and also needing to sit down, I’d pushed open the door with some trepidation and asked whether I could get a cup of coffee.

“Sure,” came the friendly response. When I requested only one shot of coffee in the Americano he commented that he hadn’t made a one-shot coffee for a while. My explanation about needing to keep my potassium levels low struck a chord with him and we went on to exchange some medical history. He’d had a bad concussion and caffeine was now contraindicated. Like me he loved coffee, however he could only allow himself one cup a week. I was fortunate in being allowed one cup a day, but rarely had ‘real’ coffee as I believed it to be higher in potassium. My restrictions resulted from kidney impairment.