Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Work

23 October 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

In New Zealand, every fourth Monday in October is Labour Day, a public holiday that commemorates the introduction of the eight-hour working day. This achievement dates back to the 1840 campaign of Wellington carpenter Samuel Pickering. The public holiday dates from 1890, and was ‘Mondayised’ in 1910.

Work is extremely important to health and wellbeing (read a Corpus take on this by Matt Blackwood here). It can enrich a life, or grind a person into dust. As ever, balance is all, and Corpus is taking a mini-break for Labour Day (just one post this week), because…

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Philip Larkin, from Toads [Read more…] about Work

“my wide white bed”: poems by Trish Harris

16 October 2017 Leave a Comment

Lynn Jenner

The hospital sails
like a tall ship
down the crease of the valley.
I am stabilised
mid-mast
laid out on a wide white bed
head facing east.

The first poem in my wide white bed, Trish Harris’s poetic memoir of an eight week stay in Lower Hutt Hospital, places her in bed, pinned out and pinned down. She is in pain, she has lots to worry about but she has a window to look out from and lots of company – sometimes more company than she would like. She can’t go anywhere or get out of bed. She can’t avoid the noises of peoples’ bodies and she can’t escape from her own body.

Silverstream Hospital and the Marines

16 October 2017 6 Comments

Susanna (Susi) Williams

When we talk about World War 2, we usually tell the stories of people, but I would like to highlight the role of Silverstream Hospital in saving soldiers’ lives and connecting New Zealanders with Americans at a time when New Zealanders felt very vulnerable to the threat of invasion by the Japanese. Japanese military successes in early 1942, especially the fall of Singapore, had made the possibility of an invasion of New Zealand very real. In this context the presence of two Marine divisions was welcomed by the New Zealand government. With the Marines here, New Zealand would be safer, our own soldiers could stay in North Africa, and New Zealand could be a base for American operations against Japanese-occupied Islands in the South Pacific.

Marines receiving Purple Heart, Silverstream Hospital 1943 — Colonel J H Nankivell, United States Military Attache in Wellington, handing citation orders to United States Marines receiving the Purple Heart decoration for gallantry at the United States Naval Base Hospital in Silverstream, Upper Hutt, 31 January, 1943. Image courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library.

Rhododendron Day

16 October 2017 4 Comments

Sue Wootton and Doug Lilly

2017_10_15 Botanical Gardens 01

Tick tock, tick tock. Ours is a busy culture built on clock time. With so much to do and only 24 hours a day in which to do it, no wonder sleeplessness, anxiety and overwhelm are some of the signature complaints of, well, our times. But there are other ways of living in time. There is seasonal time, for example.

Thus I could tell you it’s October in Dunedin, or I can throw a blanket over that clockwork time-bird ticking in its cage and go outside. What’s the time? Here it is: it’s seven-tui-in-the-kōwhai. It’s the time of the full-blown orange poppies, the time of pear-blossom-like-snow, the moment of wisteria-begins-to-purple. It’s the era of the slightly tattered tulips and the wind-blown dilapidated daffodils.

And most vividly of all, it is the time of the rhododendrons, a city-wide seasonal blaze of beauty, celebrated annually at the Dunedin Botanic Gardens (home of the world-renowned Rhododendron Dell) as Rhododendron Day. Season’s tidings, then, from the colour-full, spring-full south.

[Read more…] about Rhododendron Day

Going public with very personal stories

9 October 2017 3 Comments

Trish Harris

When I was six years old I developed juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

That’s a fact I’ve stated many times in the last 12 months. I’ve told big groups and I’ve told reporters.

It’s strange to say it so bluntly and so publicly. In nearly 50 years of having arthritis, it has never been the first thing I would tell people—or even something I would deliberately draw attention to—despite it being physically obvious.

The decision to write a memoir, telling the story of growing up with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) and dealing with the resultant damaged joints as an adult, was a big one.

Reading well

9 October 2017 Leave a Comment

Sarah Gallagher

The book about mindfulness, newly purchased through Book Depository for dealing with anxiety and PTSD was recommended by my therapist. I visualised myself studiously poring over it and completing the various sections of the workbook, each of the completed sections a stepping-stone to wellness, wholeness and peace. However, opening the cover and seeing the word ‘anxiety’ in the title struck me down. I cried so much I couldn’t get past the first page. I never read the book.

[Read more…] about Reading well