Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

The political nature of hunger

14 May 2018 2 Comments

Katharine Cresswell Riol

When you think of hunger, chances are you do not summon up an image of a clothed, housed and employed individual. Yet in New Zealand there are accounts of children arriving for their morning classes without having eaten breakfast at home, and people working two jobs but still having to queue for food handouts. The food insecure within this country are not necessarily destitute individuals. They are also those on benefits, the under- or hidden employed, and the underpaid or working poor. In a country that is prosperous, free of conflict and agriculturally self-sustaining, a high level of food security is assumed, but that does not mean that the small pockets of those who remain food insecure should be any less disregarded, especially when the reason behind their insecurity is systemic.

Reading aloud

14 May 2018 2 Comments

Charlotte Molloy

Is there any greater expression of love than sitting and reading with a child?” Joy Cowley.

Dolly Parton, book champion and founder of the Imagination Library

Reading aloud to children is one of the best ways to cement a love of words and reading. In my opinion, this reading activity is phased out too quickly in our homes and classrooms. Once children start reading independently, there is a tendency to withdraw involvement and support and let them continue their reading journeys alone. However, reading aloud and independent reading are complementary activities. Continuing to read to an independent reader does not impair independent reading. On the contrary, it helps stretch readers in different ways and immerses them in a world with reading role models.

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Developing the lifelong reader

7 May 2018 1 Comment

Charlotte Molloy

Children's Room UBS — The Children’s Room, University Book Shop, Dunedin.

How can we help emerging readers progress successfully, intermediate children connect with reading and secondary students maintain that love of reading? How can we help people see reading as meaningful in their lives?

We have not yet answered all the questions about the best approaches to literacy learning, as demonstrated by the current critique of the value of New Zealand’s Reading Recovery Programme and the ‘phonics versus whole language’ debate. But CHILDREN CAN’T WAIT for these debates to be settled, so while we continue learning about what is most effective in literacy development we need to apply what we know about achieving better outcomes for our children now.

We need to develop lifelong readers, thirsty for books, with a habit and love of reading.

Living in the A zone

7 May 2018 2 Comments

Kaitrin McMullan

When my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I had the good fortune, as a storyteller and dabbler in the arts, to be able to give up poorly-paid work and move into a kind of early retirement … albeit with an elderly dependent. Swapping poverty for poverty, not too hard! The rational was that we (my partner and I) would move in and care for Mum while her brain still lived at the same address as her body, in order to make the most of these precious years, much as some people decide to devote time to their children’s early years, only in reverse. Luckily Mum’s disease has progressed very slowly and in a benign way, and we now find ourselves in a four-generation “compound” with family living next door and a rainbow gate connecting the two houses.

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SSRIs: the battle of the narratives

7 May 2018 2 Comments

Heather Bauchop

British documentary film maker Katinka Blackford Newman’s 2016 book, The Pill That Steals Lives, opens with a nauseating story: a mother kills her eleven year old daughter and ten year old son, and then turns the carving knife on herself. She wakes in the secure unit of a private psychiatric unit convinced that there are cameras trained on her every movement. She’s on suicide watch and diagnosed with psychotic depression.

The mother in the story is Katinka Blackford Newman. But it turns out she didn’t kill her kids – she hallucinated killing her kids. Newman had had a toxic reaction to a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant.

Who is telling the story here?

30 April 2018 1 Comment

Liz Breslin

In 2016, Liz Breslin was concussed. This is the third part of her ‘Diary of a Concussion’, an occasional series that documents this experience. See below for where to read parts 1 and 2.

I nearly give up. Twice. The first time I am sitting by the window at home, hand over my ear which still has a strange thudding lack of unlocated feeling that the doctor couldn’t find with her little hammer light thing and I can’t find the words for. Dull? Numb? Dumb. I feel so dumb. Stupid, stupid me.

The second time, I’ve driven to the city for the day because of the little white envelope of hope that said the neurologist would see me. A long time coming and a long time driving but that’s OK because, answers. Because, something. Because, someone.