Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

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.

Cystic Fibrosis and ‘Five Feet Apart’

6 May 2019 2 Comments

Maisy Millwater and Liz Breslin

Maisy Millwater is 14 years old and lives in Hawea Flat, New Zealand. She and her brother, Stan, have Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Here she talks with Liz Breslin about the newly-released film, Five Feet Apart. The film (adapted from the novel by Racheal Lippencott) follows Stella and Will, two young people with CF. The film’s title refers to the distance CF patients are advised to keep from one another in order to prevent cross-infections.

Liz Breslin: So, Five Feet Apart … did you like it?

Maisy Millwater: If I didn’t have CF I probably would’ve, but it reminded me, kind of. It didn’t give me much hope for my future. She [Claire Wineland, who consulted on the movie] died last year on the second of September, which is the day after [Maisy’s pet dogs] Evie and Obi’s birthday and the day before my friend McKenzie’s birthday.

LB: So if you didn’t have CF you would have liked it, maybe. But you’ve never not had CF, so how do you know?

MM: I had a doctor ask me once, how long have I had CF for. [Huge laughter.] I was like, um, it’s genetic. [Huger laughter.]

LB: What did the doctor say?

MM: I can’t remember but I was just like – [face palm].

Maisy Millwater and Bobo — Maisy Millwater and her horse Bobo

Food emulsion

6 May 2019 Leave a Comment

Marcus Loi

vinagrette — Vinagrette: an oil-in-water emulsion.

‘Emulsion’ is one of the many terms that I learned from a food chemistry paper in my undergraduate study. Back then I was not aware that emulsion is the basis of many food products which influence our daily life. Food emulsions are used to deliver nutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. In daily life we don’t often use the word ’emulsion’ but we do often consume emulsifiers, in food like milk, vinaigrettes, mayonnaise, whipped cream, ice cream, butter and margarine. Emulsion technology development is all about enhancing nutritional value, as well as improving taste and flavour in foods and beverages.

My interest in emulsion started when I worked as a product developer on edible oil products. I was astonished by the physics and chemistry on the formation of an emulsion. For examples, the mixing procedure can have almost no impact in some emulsions while in another instance, the emulsion can separate into oil and water within minutes. Emulsifiers, a minor component in the emulsion, can significantly influence the formation of emulsion and its appearance. However, the role and function of emulsifiers are often vague and dependent on the type of emulsifier. Even after spending a few years creating emulsifiers and using them to make emulsions, I still didn’t understand how emulsifiers work. About three years ago, I felt that I needed to take a break from work and do a PhD to obtain a deeper and more fundamental understanding about what happens during the formation of emulsions.

[Read more…] about Food emulsion

Public health priorities

6 May 2019 2 Comments

Barbara Brookes

How can it be that a public body appointed to set priorities for public health in New Zealand became described by a member of the same government that appointed it as “a bunch of cretins”?

The answer, epidemiologist and public health physician Sir David Skegg suggests in his compelling book The Health of the People (BWB Texts, 2019), is that politicians focused on personal health services take a short-term view, and ignore the longer-term factors that impact on the health status of the community. That preference for the short-term may be influenced by particular lobby groups – promoting food and alcohol, for example – industries whose interests would be endangered by regulation in the interests of health.

The Health of the People is motivated by concern that a focus on short-term medical services has left New Zealanders with almost no centralised planning and oversight of the kind that would have prevented what occurred in Havelock North in August 2016. In that disaster, 40 percent of residents became seriously ill because of unsafe drinking water, 45 people were hospitalised and at least three people died. While the issue hit the headlines when it occurred, the public learned little about the subsequent Inquiry, which found that the Ministry of Health failed in its duty of enforcing standards to ensure safe drinking water. The findings of the Inquiry were as invisible to the public as the bugs in the water.