Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Housing is often in the news as a cause of ill-health. Cold, damp and overcrowded houses lead to illness, and various initiatives from Housing New Zealand, in partnership with the District Health Boards, aim to promote Healthy Housing.

We are now told that heating bedrooms overnight to at least 16 degrees will protect us from raised blood pressure and increased risk of heart attack and stroke. This finding may delight power companies but it increases budgetary stress on poor families where expenditure on heating may seem a luxury.

[Read more…] about Housing and health

A Medicine Buddha Sand Mandala

12 June 2017 3 Comments

Sue Wootton

The woman who greets me in the foyer of the Dhargyey Buddhist Centre smiles and puts her fingers to her lips. She leads me into a large room with high, ornate plaster ceilings where a man is bent at work over a table. It looks for a moment as if he is painting with a fine brush. In fact he’s rubbing the serrations of a slim brass conical tube with the bone handle of an old carving knife. The tube is filled with sand the way a pen is filled with ink, and from its nib flows a stream of brightly coloured marble sand. Tibetan lama, Venerable Geshe Losang Dhonyoe is making a Medicine Buddha Mandala, a healing gift to the people of Dunedin. [Read more…] about A Medicine Buddha Sand Mandala

Bowel cancer: an ABC of definitions

12 June 2017 1 Comment

Jenny Powell

A is for Anxiety

Out of the blue, an insidious private festering was developing in my husband’s bowel; a solitary spread of cells in slow time.

When the blue eventually darkened, the GP recommended tests. The hospital didn’t. The GP demanded. The hospital agreed. It was likely to be an ulcer. All the same, you never know. What is it that you never know? No one says.

An MRI scan was the first test. We arrived early, checked in with the receptionist and sat in the waiting room.

“William Pelvis 10.15”

Risk watch/wrist watch

12 June 2017 1 Comment

Koenraad Kuiper

Poems are sneaky but each poem is sneaky in its own way. We could say the same about melanomas. And so, sneakily, just like that, a little volcano on the left arm turns wrist watch into risk watch…

Thinking outside the box

5 June 2017 17 Comments

Iona Winter

Tīmata

I think it’s fair to say that the majority of us who experience on-going pain will seek relief from medical practitioners. Four years of repeat presentations in excruciating pain, to GPs and emergency departments, and the medical profession were unable to diagnose my son. Being a skinny young Māori musician, they labelled him a ‘drug seeker’ instead.

When someone doesn’t fit into a prescribed box, shouldn’t you look further?

A report from Teddy Bear Hospital

5 June 2017 Leave a Comment

Savannah Adams

teddy bear hospital med students — Medical students Marnia Brydon and Tui Lute give Big Ted a check up.

Towards the end of May, after months of organising, I was part of a group of second and third year Otago University medical students who had the pleasure of bringing to life the 2017 Dunedin Teddy Bear Hospital. The hospital runs for a week and culminates with a Community Day on the final Saturday. It gives children, mostly aged 3 to 7, the chance to engage with a simulated healthcare environment, but in this case with the wonderful moral support of a best friend – their teddy.