25 quotes found
"I had returned from my Fulbright year at the University of Chicago, blessed with only the joys and none of the irritations of being pregnant with twins. Landing in Melbourne, I went for a routine ultrasound as a beaming, expectant parent. I came out a grieving patient. The twins were dying in utero, unsuspectedly and unobtrusively, from some rare condition that I had never heard of. Two days later, I was induced into labour to deliver the two little boys whom we would never see grow. Then I went home."
"It can be tricky but I try to put my patients' grief into perspective without being insensitive. It's extraordinary how many of them really appreciate knowing that I, and others, have seen thousands of people who are frightened, sad, philosophical, resigned, angry, brave and puzzled, sometimes all together, just like them. It doesn't diminish their own suffering but helps them peek into the library of human experiences that are catalogued by oncologists. It prompts many patients to say that they are lucky to feel as well as they do despite a life-threatening illness, which is a positive and helpful way of viewing the world. I will never know what kind of a doctor I might have become without the searing experience of being a patient. The twins would have been 10 soon. As I usher the next patient into my room to deliver bad news, I like to think that my loss was not entirely in vain."
"The ASRC [Asylum Seeker Resource Centre] needed a volunteer doctor and I said yes, thinking it would be easy work. In quick succession I saw a little boy with a broken arm, a distressed rape victim, a man with uncontrolled hypertension, and a woman with acute asthma, all of whom had been turned away from hospital. The nurse took the little boy to her doctor friend who would plaster his arm at home, and I rummaged through an old carton of supplies to find some antihypertensives and an inhaler. The rape victim fled, confirming that I was not the therapist she needed. I finished my first shift wistful for the controlled environment of my hospital but conflicted that it, and other hospitals, would deny care to sick patients."
""What kind of a doctor will you be?" "An able one, I hope." "I hope that you become a doctor who will engage with the problems of the world." For an 18-year-old medical student, this aspiration was as professorial as it was intangible. Why worry about global health when the muscles of the back and leg needed memorising? And how did reproductive rights matter when the exam involved peering down a microscope to identify bacteria?"
"I once wrote a report on the inequities I had witnessed on an elective rotation in my Indian home town. He spent hours refining it and encouraged me to aim high. Months later, I excitedly told him that my essay had been accepted for publication in the Lancet. "But wait, they want to remove the best bits," he frowned. A mention in the world’s most prestigious journal was enough for me but this prolific author had other ideas. "Tell the editor why your whole essay deserves to be published." I gasped at the prospect of committing premature career suicide, but he encouraged me to avoid the easy way out. "When you own your work, you signal your integrity." He was right. The Lancet eventually printed my essay in full and his pride outshone my relief. His lesson would accompany me throughout life, and we stayed in touch beyond medical school."
"The dog repays our love by being the only one to faithfully meet and greet us when we come home. Instead of mumbling something unintelligible without looking up from the TV remote, Odie skids and skates to the door, paying no heed to the risk of a fractured leg. His tail wags overtime as he makes cute guttural sounds and promptly rolls over for a belly scratch while holding out hope for a snack. It is impossible to resist anyone who takes such unalloyed pleasure at your presence and whose behaviour is not dictated by what happened at the office that day."
"The dog needs boundaries, I warned, as Odie clambered on to laps and snuggled at various feet, ensconced in the folds of a blanket. Then, like a stealthy invader, he crept up the stairs. And then one day, behold, he was on the big bed where we congregate for family time. I screeched and Odie jumped off. He tried again and I growled. But Odie can read vibes. He knew that the consensus view maintained that shoving an innocent dog off the communal bed was not the done thing."
"I wonder whether our frameworks are more the hangups of our pre-liberal parents than we realise. In the patriarchal, restricted and desperately sexist world that came before, one can imagine that a woman without children may have been a object of concerned pity – because the old gendered denial of career paths, educational opportunities and independent incomes meant that beyond partnership and parenthood there weren't so many other fulfilling experiences for women on offer. Our biological destiny isn't to reproduce – remember? It's just to die, and find ways to meaningfully occupy our time before we do."
"It’s gettin’ bits o’ posies, ’N’ feelin’ mighty good; A-thrillin’ ’cause she loves you, An’ wond’rin’ why she should; [...] As if there’s nothin’ mattered, As if the world was good, As if the Lord was lookin’, An’ sort o’ understood."
"It's us two when it's morning, And us two when it's night; And us two when it's troubled, And us two when it's bright;And us two don't want nothing To make life good and true, And lovin'-sweet, and happy, While us two's got us two."
"I have grown past hate and bitterness, I see the world as one; But though I can no longer hate, My son is still my son.All men at God's round table sit, And all men must be fed; But this loaf in my hand, This loaf is my son's bread."
"It was, it was a fairy man Who came to town today. "I'll make a cake for sixpence, If you will pay, will pay."I paid him with a sixpence, And with a penny, too; He made a cake of rainbows, And baked it in the dew. [...] He iced it with a moonbeam, He patterned it with play, And sprinkled it with star-dust From off the Milky Way."
"Youth troubles over eternity; age grasps at a day and is satisfied to have even the day."
"We are the sons of Australia, Of the men who fashioned the land, We are the sons of the women Who walked with them, hand in hand; And we swear by the dead who bore us, By the heroes who blazed the trail, No foe shall gather our harvest, Or sit on our stockyard rail."
"Never admit the pain, Bury it deep; Only the weak complain. Complaint is cheap."
"I never knew how wide the dark, I never knew the depth of space, I never knew how frail a bark, How small is man within his place,Not till I heard the swans go by, Not till I marked their haunting cry, Not till, within the vague on high, I watched them pass across the sky. ..."
"I span and Eve span, A thread to bind the heart of man!"
"I have no thunder in my words, Thunder is much too high; But I can see as far as birds, And feel the wind go by.And I can follow through the grass The darling-breasted quail; For, though things great in splendour mass, I choose the lesser grail."
""I'm old Botany Bay; Stiff in the joints, Little to say.I am he Who paved the way, That you might walk At your ease to-day; [...] I split the rock; I felled the tree: The nation was — Because of me!"Old Taking the sun From day to day. ... Shame on the mouth That would deny The knotted hands That set us high!"
"Never allow the thoughtless to delcare That we have no tradition here!"
"I shall go as my father went, A thousand plans in his mind, With something still held unspent When death lets fall the blind.I shall go as my mother went, The ink still wet on the line: I shall pay no rust as rent For the house that is mine."
"Nurse no long grief, Lest the heart flower no more; Grief builds no barns; its plough Rusts at the door."
"Emptied of us the land, Ghostly our going, Fallen, like spears the hand Dropped in the throwing.We are the lost who went, Like the cranes, crying; Hunted, lonely, and spent, Broken and dying."
"I am not very patient, Yet patient I must be With him beside my pillow And the babe upon my knee. [...] Strange that I was given Thoughts that soar to heaven, Yet must I sit and keep Children in their sleep!"
"Moorangoo, the dove, in her high place mourned, And Mulloka, the Water Spirit, turned In his shade as he heard her weep, Sad as the lone that cries in his sleep At the sound of the gun, Asking for pity where pity was none."