Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Homesickness

23 April 2018 5 Comments

Barbara Brookes

Who hasn’t suffered it? A longing for the quality of the light, the green of the country, the sound of the waves, the language of your origins, or for familiar food. Homesickness might strike at odd times and be triggered by the senses.

Watching Marina Willer’s Red Trees recently, a documentary about Willer’s Jewish refugee father who went to Brazil, I learned a new word, saudade, which her father said he felt for Europe. Saudade has no real English equivalent, though Wikipedia suggests ‘missingness’. In English we might think of nostalgia, a longing for past good times, but we do not have a day of official celebration of this emotion, as the Brazilians apparently do, on January 30^th.

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Polio and me

16 April 2018 1 Comment

Marlayna Zucchiatti

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Adolf Hitler.

Here comes Polio

In 1957, I was 17 months old, our family’s fifth and youngest child. I was, my mother says, just “nicely learning to walk”. Then I got polio. It came to me at my uncle Bap’s remote cabin one weekend in Northern Ontario, Canada. Close to midnight and engulfed by an angry storm, my mother, my father, my polio and I were taken across the dark, choppy lake to the car, to the hospital, to the dreaded news. There was no doubt. Polio: 1.

The predicted blueprint of my life had taken a detour. And I had a new, annoying companion to travel with: from now on it was Polio and me.

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Monday night magic

16 April 2018 1 Comment

Susie Frame and Sue Mepham

Every Monday evening in a suburban Dunedin church we have the privilege of being part of a little bit of magic – Flagstaff Community Choir magic. FCC started in 2008 but prior to that we had been working together, teaching and leading music in various settings, both in schools and in the community. During this time, we observed the benefits of group singing. Not just a musical activity, group singing is a workout for the body and mind, promoting self-esteem, enhancing mood, and providing opportunities for friendship. [Read more…] about Monday night magic

Invalid country

16 April 2018 2 Comments

Sue Wootton

Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship.” Susan Sontag.

The idea that health and illness are different states, sometimes to the point of being completely different territories or countries has proved to be an enduring and powerful metaphor. Virginia Woolf, for example, in her 1930 essay “On Being Ill”, wrote of the distance between the worlds of the well and the ill, and of how different those two worlds feel to their inhabitants. She described the ‘daylight’ quality of health, which is a place of community, purpose, business and busy-ness. But, she noted, in the same way that daylight obliterates the ever-present skyful of stars, so when “the lights of health go down” the “undiscovered countries” of illness are revealed. We all have another homeland, that strange and disconnected place where nothing seems to go to plan:

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” Susan Sontag.

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On Pride

9 April 2018 Leave a Comment

Ella Robinson and Hahna Briggs

This week – 7-15 April – is Dunedin Pride Week. Every year, during Pride celebrations across New Zealand, people ask why we still need Pride. Why do we still celebrate it after marriage equality? Why be so loud? What does Pride even mean? There isn’t a straightforward answer.

Pride means different things to different people. For some, it’s a time for finding or discovering representation. For others it’s about commemorating all those who actively fought (and still fight) for LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual) people to be recognized as citizens with equal rights in New Zealand and around the world.

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In the poppy corridors

9 April 2018 3 Comments

Graham Matrix

Today at work I arrived early, changed my shirt, tied my hair. I ate an apple in the break room before handover at four o’clock. It’s time to go, three of us carers on this shift. In the nurses’ station we get a list and a walkie talkie.

Then we’re off and running. Nurse reminds me not to leave towels in the sluice room. That’s fine – I can definitely not do that. I go up the No.2 Wing, get my bearings for the shift ahead, reminding everyone to come to dinner at five o’clock, pulling curtains and closing doors.