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”
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.
I write a weekly column, WordWays, in the Otago Daily Times newspaper, in which I look at language matters, very broadly conceived. Articles range from the history and grammar and wordstock of English, to its family of languages and beyond, to the purposes of speaking and writing in it, and the rights and wrongs of spelling, pronunciation, grammar, syntax, you name it. I return whenever possible to the best exemplars of our language, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens — the giants of English expression.
Recently I talked at the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival as part of a panel of health practitioners who write. Called Word Balm, our session set out to explore what language contributes to the practice of medicine. At the end of a wide-ranging conversation, chair Barbara Brookes called for questions from the audience. A woman raised her hand.
