Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

“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.

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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.

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Dr Emily Siedeberg-McKinnon’s account of the history of maternity care in Dunedin

9 October 2017 Leave a Comment

Dr Emily Siedeberg-McKinnon

No records appear to have survived of the pioneering work in training midwives carried out at St Helens Hospital in Dunedin. The St Helen’s Hospitals provided early women doctors with a secure base and regular salary which was sometimes hard to achieve in general practice. Dr Emily Siedeberg-McKinnon wrote the following account of its initial years, which were subject to controversy. The account was retrieved from a storage box at the Dunedin Pioneer Women’s Hall by historian-in-residence Rachael Fraser, and edited for publication on Corpus by Dr Barbara Brookes.

Liberal Premier, Richard John Seddon established the first State Maternity Hospital in Wellington in June 1905 and called it St. Helens Hospital after the town of his birthplace In England. The hospitals were to cater for working men whose wives earned less than £4 per week and were to provide training for state-registered midwives, under the 1904 Midwives Registration Act.