Anna Hoek-Sims
Our current global situation with Covid-19 and our nationwide lockdown has reminded me of the many forms that isolation can take. Bullies, health conditions, geographic locations – among other factors – can cause barriers to pop up between us, socially, physically, and mentally. I remember, for example, when fifteen years ago a friend was diagnosed with celiac disease and had to change to a gluten-free diet. Gluten-free food was scarce then, compared to its ready availability in supermarkets today. I imagine that her diagnosis would’ve been isolating, not only in terms of the food she could eat, but also in terms of what her family and friends could understand about her new reality.
Ironically, cancer too is a very isolating disease. Ironic in the sense that we all know someone who has cancer, has survived a cancer diagnosis, or who has passed away from the disease or complications of it. Ironic, given the number of charities there are supporting patients and their whanau. However, each patient has their own unique experience. This is for a myriad of reasons: their diagnosis, their body, their state of health, their medications, their treatment … the list could go on. No two cancer patients, even if they share the exact same diagnosis, will have the same experience.
In some ways, Aotearoa’s lockdown reminds me of my own cancer experience. I was 22 years young and finishing my studies at Otago University. On campus, I felt I stuck out like a sore thumb. I looked different (despite a wig), had special arrangements for classes if I had chemo that day, had to avoid people (due to the toxicity of the drugs and because my immune system was non-existent), and missed tests. I struggled to relate to my peers and was jealous of their conversations. Compare, for example, “I’m so tired from Sam’s party last night. Did you see Henry? He was totally wasted” with “We’ll book you in for a lung function test, heart echo cardiogram, bone marrow biopsy, CT scan, and we’ll need a PET scan as well, before we start treatment.”
I’ve always loved the word ‘bubble’. It says what it is: a puff of air in a tense bracket of plosives finished with a liquid gloss. Bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble. Say it five times fast and hear the pot boil – a sound so ancient that it was probably heard by your grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother, when she was a little girl. If anyone had asked her about her bubble, she might have assumed the soup had stopped simmering because the fire had gone out. In 2020, though, bubbles have taken on a whole new meaning, and a new social greeting has entered the language: “How’s your bubble?”
Today was our deadline. It was still dark when we hugged on the driveway. Your embrace felt solid, warm, stable. Within it I felt frail. We don’t know who is more at risk. You, with your chronic night cough. The insufficient protective gear. The leaky protocols. Me, with a relapsing and remitting immunological disease and on the wrong side of fifty. Children are supposed to be okay, but what about our middle daughter, the one with severe allergies, who is taken down for weeks, even by a common cold?
There seem to be more dogs getting walked these days – or are we just doing it all at the same time? Dog walking, I would argue, is important for both physical and mental health. We have been committed dog walkers from graduate school days when we dog-sat a Newfoundland and a Labrador. Our first dog, Taffy, a Welsh terrier, was a present to my Dad on his seventieth birthday in the hope that he would take more walks to help his heart condition. When my Dad’s heart gave out two years later, we took over the naughty and ill-trained dog from my unable-to-cope mother. Taffy returned to my mother five years later – a bit calmer – when we went overseas on study leave. When we came back, we saw how that naughty dog had enhanced my mother’s life. Those walks around her neighbourhood kept her fit and brought her new friends. At home he was great company. There was no way Taffy was coming back to us.
