conversations about medicine and life
We publish a range of perspectives on health and wellbeing, especially reflective or creative work which fleshes out the biomedical version of illness and disability.
Tui Bevin
I can save lives even though I’ll never perform heart surgery or discover a cure for cancer.
Four years ago I discovered my perfect volunteer job: plasma donor. My blood group was suitable, I’m not too skinny and I like being waited on with cups of tea while I have nothing more important to do for three quarters of an hour than putting my feet up and reading. As community service goes, donating plasma is no hardship, if you don’t mind being jabbed and weighed regularly.
Beatrice Hale
‘Care’ can be a misnomer. It should mean compassion, love, looking after, affection. All the positives in one word.
But it doesn’t.
My great-aunt, Georgina, lived for many years in The Mitchell Hospital, a nineteenth century Presbyterian Church supported ‘sheltered care’ facility. It was located on The Chanonry, the street which had grown up beside St Machar’s Cathedral in Old Aberdeen, a once independent township with a history of more than 1,000 years, and with many finds dating from about 4000 BC.
David Perez
After 40 years in oncology practice has my experience lived up to initial expectations? My answer is a big YES! On the scientific front the explosion in the understanding of genomics and the defective genes that initiate cancer growth has led to new therapies which target the defective genes and generally have fewer toxic effects than chemotherapy. These so-called targeted therapies are likely to have their main impact on suppressing cancer growth rather than eradicating the disease but prolonged suppression of cancer can be very beneficial and can be compared to the prolonged suppression of the HIV virus in AIDS. Patients with advanced cancer that will ultimately prove fatal are now living several years longer than previously due to better cancer controlling therapies. The rapid progress in the understanding of cancer genetics will ensure there will be a proliferation of new cancer interventions over the next 20 years. Other advances include the identification of defective genes that cause familial cancer which then allows preventive action including screening to be undertaken. Another recent cancer prevention strategy is the use of vaccines against viruses that can cause cancer such as cervical and liver cancers.
Sandra Arnold
Knowing what to say to bereaved parents can be extraordinarily difficult. Language often fails in this context because of unfamiliarity with death, the decline of mourning rituals, and an increasingly secular, urban and mobile society. Language can also fail when we try to describe a bereaved person. Phrases commonly used, such as ‘breaking down’ and ‘losing control’, are those used in describing dysfunctional machinery. Grief is spoken of in the same terms as an illness from which people ‘recover’ and ‘return to normal’.
Huberta Hellendoorn
A short extract from Huberta Hellendoorn’s recently published memoir, Astride a Fierce Wind (Mākaro Press, 2017).
A few weeks ago I realised that this ageing body could benefit from some repair work and I made an appointment to visit a specialist. Again.
I arrive at the suite of the surgeon. Soft grey-wool carpet on which are arranged deep armchairs in tonings of navy blue. Oh, how I love this luxury. I feel so warm, so pampered. Modernist paintings on the palest of blue walls, framed with just that right amount of grey and chrome.
I’m led into the surgeon’s room. After a series of perfunctory questions I’m told I’ll need a small operation to clear my medical problem. It will mean just one day in hospital. I’m told that I’ll be well looked after and that it will be a day of rest and relaxation. I feel awful. How can I disappoint him? How can I tell him that even one day is too much?
David Perez
On the surface medical oncology does not seem an attractive career choice. Medical oncology refers to the treatment of cancer by drugs, including chemotherapy. This carries the connotation of patients suffering miserable side effects of treatment and ultimately treatment does not prevent death from the disease. During my training at the University of Auckland Medical School I had no particular awareness of oncology as a career choice as students were not placed on an oncology attachment. Following graduation I spent a year working in a provincial hospital, Taranaki Base Hospital in New Plymouth, then I returned to Auckland Hospital where I was assigned to work for six months on the oncology ward. Oncology wasn’t a popular attachment and I wasn’t overly happy about the prospect. Paradoxically working in oncology proved to be a positive experience and I learnt a lot that had not been highlighted in medical school. This reflected the medical school curriculum of the 1970s which taught a great deal about disease and treatment but not so much about the experience of illness and the impact on the whole person. This unplanned experience in oncology stimulated sufficient interest to consider oncology as a career choice.
