Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy – and a little art with our medicine

28 November 2016 1 Comment

Dr Cindy Towns

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is thought to account for 1-2 percent of acute coronary syndromes (ACS), ACS being medicalese for what most people would call ‘heart attacks’.

Takotsubo as a diagnosis got its name from a Japanese Octopus pot which looks a little like the Takotsubo heart on echocardiography (essentially an ultrasound). Takotsubo has some more creative synonyms, including acute stress cardiomyopathy, broken heart syndrome and ‘scared to death’. It mimics a traditional heart attack but is not due to coronary artery disease. Rather, the structure of the heart balloons in places. Classically, physically or emotionally distressing events precede the presentation, but the exact mechanism of the condition remains speculative. It has been associated with earthquakes in both Japan and New Zealand.

There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in

21 November 2016 1 Comment

Max Reid

This post was originally written late on Friday 11^th November 2016, after a week of struggling to come to terms with the American election result, only to hear that afternoon of the death of poet/songwriter/musician Leonard Cohen. Adjusting to that news with a glass of wine at the ready, and Leonard’s London Concert double album playing loud enough to send the cat and dog scampering for cover, the post originally began, “Just when you thought events in the world couldn’t get any worse … we hear news that Leonard Cohen has died…”

“Anthem” Leonard Cohen, Auckland 21 December 2013 (his last concert)

Well, events in the world invariably can and do get worse, and sometimes a wee bit close to home. Within little more than 48 hours North Canterbury and Wellington had been rocked by a series of devastating earthquakes.

So this post, which was originally drafted as something of a tribute to Leonard Cohen, now serves as much as a tribute to people of Kaikoura and the surrounding areas – as they wrestle to find meaning and hope in the midst of what for them is, in so many ways, a broken world.

Jane Austen’s satire on hypochondria

21 November 2016 Leave a Comment

Jocelyn Harris

Between 27 January and 18 March 1817, Jane Austen wrote her final, unfinished, novel Sanditon, meaning a town built upon sand. This blistering satiric anatomy links hypochondria, property speculation, and consumerism—invalids seek out seaside resorts, property prices rise, and developers cash in on the new health fads of sea air and sea-bathing. In Sanditon, Austen demonstrates her modernity, her courage, and her worldliness. Yet again.

Jane Austen knew all about hypochondriacs, because Mrs. Austen was one. I cannot forgive her for occupying the sofa after a busy day gardening, while Jane lay dying on two chairs shoved together (Jane died on 18 July 1817). But as Mary Musgrove says in Persuasion, “I am very far from well; and Jemima has told me that the butcher says there is a bad sore-throat about. I dare say I shall catch it; and my sore-throats, you know, are always worse than anybody else’s.”

Poetry=Medicine?

21 November 2016 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

“Poetry=Medicine”: this was the title of an event with which I was involved as part of last weekend’s 2016 Litcrawl festival in Wellington. We were four poets, plus MC and essayist Paul Stanley-Ward: a doctor, a physiotherapist, a chaplain and a literary scholar.

Medicine can be sweet: a balm, a pharmaceutical concoction that soothes and relaxes, that allows you to temporarily forget your aches and enjoy your life. Medicine can be harsh: strong chemicals, purgative or bitter tonic. Medicine always has side effects, because any attempt to tweak a part always sends ripples through the whole.

Poetry=Medicine? Here are some of the ways we tested that equation.

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Theatre: a brave and bloody place

14 November 2016 Leave a Comment

Liz Breslin

In the eighteen-somethings, an operating theatre was where a surgeon literally performed. The audience, jostling for a better view despite the tiered seating, were there to be entertained as much as to learn. While the modern stage is a somewhat more sanitised affair, theatre remains a brave and bloody place for laying out and suturing bleeding hearts.

My play, Losing Faith, which performed over six sell-out shows at Edgewater Resort in Wanaka, New Zealand, in September 2016, is my story but not my story and not necessarily the story of any of the estimated 13% of young mums and 10% of new dads who suffer post natal depression either. It’s a story of missed moments, of Coffee Group, of parenthood, under a somewhat surgical series of lenses.

Waipiata Sanatorium: through a novelist’s eye

14 November 2016 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

Some places exert a particularly strong pull on the imagination. One such site is Orangapai, the former tuberculosis sanitorium at Waipiata, positioned in the grand, high-sky landscape of the Maniototo, Otago, New Zealand. The sanitorium inspired Emily Duncan to pen her playscript Waipiata. For novelist Laurence Fearnley, Orangapai was the genesis for her 2007 novel Edwin + Matilda.
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