On the right side of this post you will see the headings ‘Medical stuff ‘, ‘Doctor’s tales‘ and ‘Other’. ‘Doctors Tales‘ is a collection of stories from my days as front line doctor. ‘Medical stuff’ is medical info I couldn’t resist posting. ‘Other‘ is my ramblings.
The picture below is the source of ‘Doctors Tales’. It was written in the 1990s.
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[expand title=”About me”]
I am a retired medical practitioner and getting on a bit now. After 5 years as a junior doctor working in United Kingdom hospitals I came to New Zealand in 1975, aged 29. Following a year as a registrar in critical care and after a few locum jobs around New Zealand, Tish and I arrived on Waiheke Island.
A drug addict in a down-trodden Auckland city practice had suggested we take a look at Waiheke. A couple of weeks later Tish and I visited. Not too long after that we bought a wee house for 47,000 dollars. We rented a house in Oneroa to use as a surgery. An advertisement was placed in the Gulf News. We opened the door and waited for customers.
The decision to move to Waiheke was a spur of the moment punt – no research. It was a gorgeous place with interesting people. It took a month or two of serving coffees and chatting before we knew it would be okay. A year down the road we realised we’d slipped into living together without thinking or talking about it. We had simply gone with the flow.
Everyone was calling Tish, Mrs Bell, so we thought we might as well …… get married.
Waiheke is in the Hauraki Gulf, 13 miles from the city of Auckland. It was where my wife, Tish, and I began in so many ways, to fumble our way into growing up. It was where my orthodox views, medical and otherwise, came under intense scrutiny. Our nine years on Waiheke was not all a bed of roses. Tish and I nearly bust up but I look back on our time there with immense fondness and some nostalgia. We grew up.
There were supporters of acupuncture, reflexology, various forms of massaging and ways of manipulating the spine and other joints, Reiki, homeopathy, cranial osteopathy, Bach flower remedies, varying forms of counselling and dietary practices – people claiming cures from massive doses of chilli powder, to sniffing urine. I was introduced and experienced psychodrama, chair work and looked into things like the Option process and on and on.
I used acupuncture with amazing success for a short while – the same with manipulation – and then without much success. This success at first, then it fading off, seemed to be a pattern with most alternative things I tried out. A bit like a study I read years ago which suggested that novice psychotherapists were more effective than their teachers.
I was involved with a couple of ‘wise’ older men. Many strange things happened while I was under their influence. Some of these will be in the short stories or case histories. I will elaborate then. Truly weird!
Waiheke and many of its folk flipped my world view. I ended up thinking that it’s not so much what we think and feel on a conscious level but what we believe or know to be so on an ‘unconscious’ level which runs are behaviours and our lives; and maybe to a larger extent than seems likely our state of health or lack of it. I still think this but with less fervour.
Tish and I moved off the island and into a community. I wrote a book published under the title of ‘Creative Health,’ with a working title of ‘Fighting to Die the Cost of Living is Too High’. I set myself up as a metaphysician (weird) counsellor, ran groups, started The Creative Health Institute and saw folk one on one in my home. This was a lot of fun and not financially viable. A fence fell down, the car was rusty and musty inside, with grass growing in the floor mats
There was no money to fix the fence or replace the car.
I became a doctor again working in drop in clinics and for home visiting services. After a few years of this, I spent the last years of my working life living in a fifth wheel with Tish, travelling around New Zealand working as a locum medic – mostly on Great Barrier Island. Tish was running groups for a sales, marketing company.
About three to four years ago Tish and I retired. We bought and ran a B and B in Coromandel New Zealand – The Green House.
Last year 2018, Tish and I were visiting the UK and Europe when we had to cut this short as our “son in law” had suffered a significant head injury. He was going to need help at home as he recovered. Once we were able to take a break Tish and I visited the grand Canyon. She was fitter than I – full of beans. About six weeks later my darling was dead.
Tish died from a very aggressive form of malignancy – an hepatic-angio-sarcoma. We were told these particular cancer cells double in number every two to three hours. One opinion we had was that Tish might not live a month and could die at any moment from an internal bleed. Another told us, after being pressured, she might live two weeks. Pretty devastating. From the day we took her to hospital till she died was about 30 days, 30 days of many ups and downs – its a rare form of benign haemangioma, no its a metatstatic cancer. 5 days before we took her to hospital, besides a persistent cough which she had developed following a sore throat five weeks before, she was fit and well.
Tish was a vegetarian, walker, meditator and yoga enthusiast, a welcoming bright and effervescent soul with many plans for the future. Her draws and cupboards filled with what was going to be needed for her to paint, draw and make cards again. She was preparing for the future.
I was supposed to go before her. She was living and being a healthy lifestyle – me, not so much, well no where near. Life is filled with random and inexplicable events.
The morning of the day she died she took my hand and said, “I am dying Andrew”.
“Are you scared, worried or anxious”
“No, I am just so sad I won’t see my grand children”.
A short while later Jake arrived from Melbourne, Zoe and I left for a break. Jake and Tish chatted for an hour or so. Jake fell asleep snuggled up to her. When Zoe and I came back it was apparent she had slipped into a coma. A few hours later she took her last breath.
Most of her time in hospital we ran a facebook messenger site, called Tish Updates. A quite extraordinary way for friends from far away to send love, messages of appreciation, photos, poems and music all of which were shared with Tish. We now have it as a book. In her last few hours we played her her favourite music and read messages of love and appreciation to her. She had video chats from far and wide and during her last few hours her sister Rosie and brother Johnny were able to be with her and speak their thoughts and feelings. My brother Tom was on video from the UK as she took her last breath.
It’s about nine months since Tish died – boy oh boy, I am realising how much I depended on her in so many ways.
How do I explain her death. Could it have been the radiotherapy she had 12 years ago? Could it be some unknown emotional issue eating away at her? Could it be a random plutonium ion that lodged itself in her liver? Could it be her healthy diet wasn’t that healthy? I have given up asking these questions as there is no way to answer any of them them. All I know is I miss her and just writing this brings bursts of tears.
Three years it took my mother to know on all levels of her being that my dad her man had gone!
I wrote a book many moons ago. Its working title was “Fighting to die the cost of living is too high“. It was inspired by an imaginary character of mine, an aborigine I named Waka along with the story of bone pointing.
Our narratives, theories and beliefs (conscious and not so conscious) about ourselves, others and the world, can help us find our way and they can lead us down nasty rabbit holes, constrain and even harm us. To what extent are our troubles in life a consequence of bones pointed by self, others and our cultural beliefs? This is a question that has hung round me for many years now.
I hope the above gives you a feel for and a sense of who and what I have been and am. And I hope the stories, commentary and ideas I am going to share bring something/s worthwhile into your life – a laugh, a wow, a tear, a smile, a recognition, some understanding, relief, insight or ……. Time will tell.
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