Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Kidney disease: are you at risk?

12 March 2018 Leave a Comment

Max Reid

A couple of Saturdays ago I attended a meeting of Kidney Health New Zealand’s Consumer Council. The Council comprises around 18-20 individuals from around the country, each with kidney disease of varying types and progression. We only meet once a year, and only for around five hours – for those attendees on dialysis, the logistics involved in planning their dialysis around such an event preclude meeting more often or for longer.

Each meeting begins with a round of introductions. How they do that has always been over to the group – but always the format has been the same: name, where they’re from, and the nature of their condition.

“Hi, I’m Ben from Tauranga – on home haemodialysis.”

“Morena. Haami. Northland. In-centre haemodialysis.”

“Hi. My name’s Bridget. I’m from Christchurch, a transplant recipient, but also the mother of a deceased organ donor.”

When ritual is the best vessel

12 March 2018 Leave a Comment

Susan Wardell

Medical anthropologist Dr Susan Wardell reviews Moon Circle: Rediscover Wildness, Intuition and Sisterhood by Lucy AitkenRead.

A moon circle is, by basic definition, a night-time gathering of women. Its roots as a cultural practice are very old, as old “as the ages”. Often outdoors, and comprising a mixture of symbolic activity and verbal sharing, the moon circle is making a resurgence in the contemporary West. AitkenRead’s book, unapologetically feminist in its goals, sets out to “rediscover wildness, intuition and sisterhood”:

We are purposely stepping into the river of womanhood that has twisted and turned throughout herstory.” – Lucy AitkenRead

For this kind of voyage, it seems ritual is the best vessel.

Clive James: “I am here now”

12 March 2018 2 Comments

Sue Wootton

Poet, essayist and all-round international man of letters, Clive James, was diagnosed with leukemia and emphysema in 2010. He wasn’t expected to survive long, but he’s still here, and writing the best work of his life. And this is largely, he says, because of death. There is nothing like intimations of your own mortality to sharpen your focus on what makes life worth living:

I am here now, who was hardly even there.”

In 2015 he published what he thought would be his farewell collection of poetry, Sentenced to Life. Last year, kicking on, as it were, like “an exhausted footballer with legs of lead”, he published another collection, called (with typical Clive James wit) Injury Time.

Love your tummy!

5 March 2018 Leave a Comment

Sara Boucher

Your daughter needs to eat more salads.”

My nine year old self heard the doctor’s stern words and took to heart that he was calling me fat. I was an active child and my family mostly ate nutritious foods. But when we ate, we ate a lot.

In high school, my drive to be thin led to disordered eating: starving, bingeing, purging, cutting out whole food groups, and subsisting on sole food groups. Nothing got me closer to fitting into smaller jeans. After days or weeks of trying to lose weight I always gave up. There seemed no point in trying to reach always-unattainable weight goals.

At the time, I wondered why my body wasn’t considered good enough by societal measures and my doctor’s opinion when I could outswim and outrun my peers. Technically, I was healthy. Blood pressure? Perfect! Cholesterol? Perfect! Fitness? I had that, too. But my weight gave my doctor reason to believe I was headed for doom and gloom.

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Dear Melanie (Part Two)

5 March 2018 2 Comments

Mike Riddell

Mike Riddell continues his conversation with Melanie from the Travel Insurance Claims Team. (Read Part One here.)

My next appointment for the Urology Department was 29 March. I was eager to get it under my belt, to get my results and be able to move on to getting the anticipated rebore. To my abject despair and shock, the doctor informed me that I had prostate cancer. Not only that, but it was Gleason Score 10, which is as high as the scale goes. The most aggressive and fastest-growing form of the cancer going. Ten minutes that changed my life.

Let me explain Melanie, since it might be relevant to my insurance claim. In the 64 years since my entry into the world, I had never in my life been in a hospital other than as a visitor. I was a fit, healthy, vital man with a wide range of interests. I didn’t do ‘sick’.

The Stone

5 March 2018 2 Comments

Sandra Arnold

In 2003, a year after our youngest daughter died, my husband Chris and I travelled from our home in New Zealand to Oman to live and work for a year. The challenges of living in this fascinating culture helped us learn to live with our grief in a way we couldn’t at home. Gradually I regained my ability to write. When we got back to New Zealand, I started recording our experiences from that time. This is one of the stories.

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