Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Why do doctors write? Admissions of a former gynaecologist…

9 April 2018 2 Comments

Mira Harrison-Woolrych

After almost thirty years as a doctor, I have started writing fiction. I have recently completed a collection of short stories called Admissions which includes tales of eight different women working in the same crumbling public hospital in the far south of Aotearoa. Sounds familiar? For those of us who have worked at the coal-face of clinical medicine, my stories may not surprise or shock, but I hope they are tales of our common humanity and shared experiences. Perhaps this is the main reason I write: I want to tell stories which unite us.

An apple fall: Easter downunder

2 April 2018 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

Corpus is taking a bit of an Easter break. We’ll be back next week with three fresh articles. Meanwhile…

Easter: whatever your stance on the religious reason for the season, it’s hard to miss the spring-associated symbolism in all those foil-wrapped chocolate eggs and bunnies. Which is a bit weird, really, for those of us in Aotearoa/New Zealand, for whom Easter marks the turn towards winter. It’s the end of daylight saving; it’s goodbye to a long hot summer and (speaking from Dunedin) those lovely lengthy southern evenings. For us downunder, it’s autumn and it’s harvest time. Open the Corpus Easter egg to read a poem by the aptly named Robert Frost that celebrates nature’s abundance and that also says: sometimes, hands off – just let be.

[soliloquy id=”5914″]

Free with his fists: trying to make sense of it (Part Two)

26 March 2018 5 Comments

Carolyn McCurdie

(Read the first part of Carolyn McCurdie’s reflections on this topic here.)

There are many, many victim-blaming questions that are asked. Most of them arise from cultural assumptions and I’m as much a product of this culture as anyone. There’s no blaming that anyone could do that I haven’t done to myself. One that caused me years of soul-searching is: but didn’t you see the signs? Surely you should have known.

Yes and no. With hindsight and maturity I can see that he was extremely narcissistic. Everything was about him. I didn’t recognise that. He was a heavy drinker. Every young man I knew was a heavy drinker. I wasn’t alert for trouble. I didn’t know I should be. There was no violence at all. This didn’t begin until about a year into the relationship. By that time I was committed.

So why didn’t I leave? Such a common question, and one much easier to answer.

The people are fighting back – with coffee cups

26 March 2018 Leave a Comment

Paul Sorrell

At a time when communities are being fragmented, human relationships increasingly commodified and people alienated from the political system, signs of resistance are springing up, often in unexpected places. In Dunedin, and particularly in North East Valley, close to where I live, community gardens and self-help groups are burgeoning.

And so is the morning tea movement. Eleven ago, however, when a friend and I started walking up the Bullock Track and along Highgate to a café in Roslyn, we never suspected that we might be a part of something bigger. In danger of burning out from a high-stress job, my friend took the sensible first step of shaving two days off his working week. The next “step” was the walking cure – a brisk uphill trek ending in a caffeinated reward.

Advance Care Planning: What matters to you?

26 March 2018 1 Comment

Helen Sawyer

On Thursday 5 April, New Zealanders will be encouraged to think about, talk about, and plan for their future and end-of-life care. Advance Care Planning Day (previously known as Conversations that Count Day) is coordinated by the Health Quality & Safety Commission. It is an ideal time to talk to your whānau/family and others close to you about things like:

what type of care you would like towards the end of your life;
where would you want to be cared for if you could no longer care for yourself;
any particular worries you have about being ill or dying.

You should also talk to your GP or other health care professionals about the medical choices you might have to face in the future.

Free with his fists: trying to make sense of it (Part One)

19 March 2018 1 Comment

Carolyn McCurdie

I told myself it wasn’t so bad. After he’d knocked me down, he never kicked me. He never broke bones, never did anything that needed medical attention. In eight years, he forgot discretion only twice. Then I had the black eyes, fat lip, swollen, discoloured face that the world could see. I hid inside, rang in sick, made carefree jokes about walking into cupboard doors.

But mostly he punched my upper arms. Often it had nothing much to do with anything I’d said or done. It was stress relief, when life hadn’t gone the way he thought it should. “Pete never allows for a stubbed toe, does he,” someone remarked when she’d witnessed the beginnings of a tantrum, controlled because people were there. I bought blouses with voluminous sleeves, because at those times my arms were too swollen to fit into ordinary sleeves.