Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Science is not enough

13 June 2016 1 Comment

Dr Anna Holmes

To be healed is to be made whole. This wholeness is not just about the body, but about the harmony of connections of body, mind, spirit and relationships that are part of each human person. Healing is not the same as cure. Cure is focused on returning the physical body to its proper functioning or removing causes of disease or dysfunction. It is not possible to cure chronic diseases or those who are dying.

Healing happens in the relationship between patient and carer. It is about trust, empathy, enabling hope and bearing witness to suffering. It is possible to be healed without being cured as well as to be cured without being healed.

Speaking wordlessly

13 June 2016 2 Comments

Huberta Hellendoorn

To communicate does not always mean using spoken words, as the development of sign language shows. But I want to write about our experience with art and non-spoken communication.

In 1962 our daughter, Miriam, was born with Down syndrome. Our feelings of disappointment and sadness were soon replaced by a determination to fill her life (and ours) with challenges that would prepare her for as normal a future as was possible. And she did have that normal life. Although she was born too early to take part in mainstreaming she stood out in all her schooling activities, and, later on, in different employment situations. In 1989 Miriam went to a course at the Mosgiel Abilities Resource Centre to learn independence skills. At the end of the course the teacher asked me, “Did you know Miriam has a talent for painting?”

[Read more…] about Speaking wordlessly

Touch. The neglected sense?

6 June 2016 4 Comments

Dr Louisa Baillie

Just on two years ago I got the phone call I didn’t want, that my dear friend Alison was close to passing away. Would I like to join her family sitting in vigil as she slept? Of course. That was hard to do, though, to walk into her bedroom and see her parents, her husband, her three children, a couple of other friends and a minister seated around her bed, all quietly focused on her. She lay curled up like a child, breathing deeply, seemingly oblivious to my presence. I didn’t know quite what to do. Conversation seemed inane. [Read more…] about Touch. The neglected sense?

An oasis from anxiety

6 June 2016 Leave a Comment

Ruth Arnison

Spring, summer, autumn, winter: four times a year Ruth Arnison distributes 8000 brightly-coloured cards to medical waiting rooms, hospices, rest homes and prisons throughout most of New Zealand. She is the founder and editor of the Dunedin-based charity Poems in the Waiting Room (NZ). But why place poetry in a waiting room? People hatee poetry, right? Wrong. The poetry cards have proved extremely popular. Arnison once received an email which sums up why: Although I am not a person who gravitates toward poetry, after I read the selection of poems, I noticed I had been given an oasis from anxiety and had been briefly removed from our present situation.

How can a poem—a few words strung together on a few lines—be an oasis? Ruth Arnison explains: [Read more…] about An oasis from anxiety

Ink under the doctor’s fingernails

6 June 2016 1 Comment

Dr John Holmes

Letterpress printing. What images do you get from these two words? I immediately think of type, lead, paper, dirty hands and black ink under the fingernails. You would not expect a doctor to have dirty hands and ink under the fingernails. When I was a medical student I was given a small hand printing press, some type and other necessary equipment. I bought a very helpful book, Printing for Pleasure, which was first published in the Teach Yourself series by the English Universities Press in the late 1950s. I have been learning and practising letterpress printing ever since. [Read more…] about Ink under the doctor’s fingernails

Muses and marble

30 May 2016 Leave a Comment

At the age of nine, Jamie Trower suffered a traumatic brain injury. He spent months in a coma, and two subsequent years living in the Wilson Centre in Auckland undergoing rehabilitation. In 2015 he published Anatomy, a powerful collection of poetry which chronicles his changed life. Jamie explains how entering the ‘separate cosmos’ of poetry helped him find a way home to himself. [Read more…] about Muses and marble