DELIVERING MARLBURIANS

THIRTY YEARS OF DELIVERING MARLBURIANS

Words: Kat Duggan

Marlborough gynaecologist and obstetrician Helen Crampton has been able to get back into old passions, like playing the flute, since retiring last month.

For more than three decades, Helen Crampton has been a fixture at Wairau Hospital, spending days, nights, weekends, weekdays and holidays delivering Marlborough babies.

Last month, the obstetrician and gynecologist left the maternity ward for the last time, retiring early to spend more time enjoying the Marlborough lifestyle. At the peak of her career, as a ‘young and energetic’ specialist, Helen was delivering up to 200 babies a year. “It’s been a very satisfying career,” she says. Initially setting out to become a surgeon, Helen was working in the Emergency Department at Wellington Hospital when she encountered a difficult obstetrics case.

“I decided [then] to do a diploma in obstetrics and I fell in love with it from there. At the time it was very different; it was difficult to get into the training programme,” she says. “It was a male dominated career and I was told point blank that it was far too hard for a woman to do…so I went ahead and I got accepted into the programme and now here I am.”

Helen met her husband John on a tramping trip in the Nelson Lakes, and later made the move to Marlborough, beginning her career at Wairau Hospital in 1988.

A lover of the outdoors, Helen knew the region would be a fantastic place to raise her family; the job was the icing on the cake.

“The first thing was [figuring out] how was I going to combine my career with motherhood. I subsequently had three children, and I had a very supportive husband and you sort of make it work.” With John’s help, Helen balanced being on call, working late nights and weekends for 31 years. She recently made the decision to step back. “The demands of being called out urgently at night and continuing the next day; I was certainly finding increasingly challenging; it wasn’t a problem when I was young. “Once you hit your 60s, being on call becomes particularly challenging.” Throughout her long career Helen has met thousands of mums and babies. There are some she will never forget. “You always remember the ones that cause you more worry; there are mums you never forget,” Helen says. “A highlight would be being there at the moment of delivery for a couple who had struggled with infertility … being there and sharing their joy at that special moment, that was always a very special time.” Working in a small town for so long also meant delivering two generations of one family became inevitable. “I have delivered babies of the babies… You always enjoy when someone comes in and says ‘mum said you delivered me’,” Helen says. While highly rewarding, Helen says her career has not been without stressful moments, and she is relieved to be free of the pressure that comes with it. “There’s a commitment to get it right 100 per cent of the time, and that doesn’t always happen, so it’s extremely stressful for you, and for the person, when something hasn’t gone well,” she says. “But that’s the nature of surgery and I am relieved to be free of that potential stress.” Helen and John have established a B&B in their home in Springlands and have already met some wonderful people since opening for bookings. “I’m a people person and I still want to make a difference in other people’s lives, and that’s enabling me to do that,” Helen says. “I’m very contented in this new way of life.”

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Living with a rare condition has not stopped Zoe, 13, from enjoying life.

BRINGING UP ZOE

Words: Paula Hulburt DAVID JAMES

Teenager Zoe Tate is just one of seven people diagnosed with the rare Wolf Hirschhorn Syndrome in New Zealand. Here her mother gives an insight into what it’s like for a family living life around a terminal illness.

There is a drift of paper sitting on the table next to 13-year-old Zoe Tate. While the Blenheim teenager is seemingly absorbed in watching a cartoon on her laptop, she is also methodically tearing small strips of paper and arranging them into a pile.

Her light brown bob swings lightly as she moves to and fro; big blue eyes flicking over the screen while she fastidiously rips and arranges, rips and arranges. Zoe was never expected to survive her first birthday, but the Bohally Intermediate School pupil displays a strength of character that belies her slender 25kg frame. As mum Rosa says of her remarkable eldest daughter, affectionately nicknamed Zoflow, “she’s definitely not going anywhere.” Diagnosed when she was just 5 weeks old, after doctors discovered she was missing her soft cleft palate, Zoe has undergone both heart and reconstructive throat surgery. The disorder affects about one in every 50,000 people. Features of WHS include a characteristic facial appearance, delayed growth and development, intellectual disability, low muscle tone and seizures.

Their daughter’s resilience has been a constant source of amazement to Rosa and Bob.

Time after time, she bounced back, says Rosa, but Zoe’s diagnosis also brought unique challenges to the close-knit family of four; Rosa, husband Bob and their youngest daughter Tess. “So, she’s 13 and still a toddler. I guess over the years we’re expecting her to have developed to a certain level so she can get herself out of bed, get herself breakfast, get dressed - but those are all the things she can’t do. bottom, brush her teeth, brush her hair, wash her face.

“Left to Zoe, she’d put her clothes on inside out, dirty, upside down and it would be no problem,” says Rosa. Zoe finds comfort in routine and repetition; from the moment she gets up to bedtime at 7.30pm she craves the familiar. “She’s a terrible sleeper. We’ve trained Zoe quite well and I say trained because that’s what it was,” Rosa says. For her own safety, a child gate has been put on Zoe’s door. Her cream bedroom is bare of most objects and toys at night. “We had to put child gates on her door and remove almost everything from her room. She’s got an obsession with constantly using her hands and will move things, unpair socks and take all her clothes out of the cupboard. “She thought she was very clever as she could step over the gate. We moved the gate up but because she’s so tiny she was able to go underneath it but would get stuck on occasion and call for help. “So funny, she was totally sprung. The gate is there for her safety, you’d use one for a toddler and she’s very much the same.”

The careful shredding of paper has been part of her life since she was little. “Paper ripping is massive,“ says Rosa. “You can’t leave anything as she wants to rip and shred. She finds it calming, it’s very therapeutic for her.” “Everyone’s tried to analyse it because there seems to be a real pattern,” Rosa says. As Zoe starts to display some typical teenage personality traits, life in the Tate household is never dull. For Rosa and Bob, seeing their daughter display some feistiness is a mixed blessing. “We are getting a little bit sassy and there are some teenage personality traits that have come through which is great because we want her to be able to hold her own.”

Running around in the grass in the family’s back garden, hair whipping across her face, Zoe is all smiles as she calls to sister, Tess Bear, as she weaves past the family’s two chickens, Ruby and Honey. Zoe’s infectious giggle is that of a much younger child, for that is the reality. Zoe’s a fan of Peppa Pig, loves dinosaurs, swimming and is a talented horse rider. She also has insomnia, is a picky eater and tires very easily. Juggling Zoe’s strength and weaknesses, her likes and dislikes are now second nature for the family, especially for Tess who is adored by her older sister. It has always been that way, says Rosa. “Tess does do a lot for and with Zoe and is an awesome sister. It’s like Tess is 11 and Zoe’s still 3 or 4.”

“Zoe has taught us a lot of patience,” she says. “I know Tess is an amazing sister; if the two of them are together, we can be quite confident that Tess looks out for Zoe a lot and if someone was to be mean to Tess, Zoe would be on their back.

“Tess is her BFF without a doubt.”

When it comes to friendships, the likeable teen is now looking outside her immediate family circle and enjoys playdates at home. But away from home, without the protection and support of her family, Zoe has been teased and targeted. Situations like these, are out with their control says Rosa. “We get very upset and there have been scenarios where Zoe’s been maybe picked on or something’s been thrown at her or kicked at her.

“We’re really just left in the dark a lot of the time and just have to assume that she’s okay as she can’t tell me otherwise. “I worry about Tess, but she can come and tell me if she’s not happy with something. I don’t think she’d [Zoe] would realise if people aren’t being nice which is heartbreaking on its own. “She’s such a little dot and sometimes, she’s quite oblivious to it.” “You can look at it in a good way or a negative way, that Zoe isn’t phased by a lot of things because if she is upset then clearly something’s gone on, but she very rarely is. “The negative side of that is people can take advantage of that lovely nature and think that it’s okay to laugh at her, make jokes or exclude her.”

Zoe loves school and shares a teacher aide who helps her navigate the specially adapted school curriculum. With typical fearlessness, Zoe throws herself wholeheartedly into a school and is thriving. The love and support she is cocooned in at home are like a suit of invisible armour the teen takes with her everywhere she goes. But that’s not to say Zoe always get her own way. “We’ve encouraged Zoe to do as much as she can all the time and we try and help her to advance as much as possible. “But when it comes to telling her off or explaining what’s she’s done wrong, it’s just about being consistent. “Sometimes we get really frustrated and throw out those ridiculous threats like right, no TV or stupid things like that. She still understands that she’s done something wrong. There are times that we forget that she’s disabled and has learning difficulties and is a different child”, Rosa says. But when she falls ill, there is no chance to forget that Zoe’s needs are more complex than most other teenagers. Her energy wanes, her colour fades and the bounce and bubbles dissipate. “We’ve just come out of winter and winter was pretty brutal at the beginning, she’s much better than she used to be as we’re not hospital-based anymore now over the winter which is brilliant,” says Rosa. Every two years, the family travel to specially arranged conferences to meet other families caring for Wolf Hirschhorn Syndrome children.

The condition keeps everyone on their toes, says Rosa. After a trip to a conference in Port McQuarrie in Australia last month, an interview with a Japanese television crew is next on the cards.

After much heart-searching, the family agreed it could help others just starting their journey. “I remember back that when we found out about Zoe and how devastated I was when I looked online, it was all really doom and gloom and really negative. “It was awful to be honest as I wasn’t expecting that at all. Over the years you come to realise that yes, it’s different but it’s not necessarily awful or bad just different from what we planned. If I can make that process for easier for someone else, then I will.” Like any parents, both Rosa and Bob worry about their children’s futures. But what lays ahead for their “wonderful, cheeky, sassy, and brave” Zoe is less certain than the path Tess may follow. “You can get ahead of yourself though and we have to rein it back,” Rosa says. “When she was very young, we would be constantly worried about the next move, what would we do. “It was pretty horrific when we first got her as to how long we would have her for. You can’t concentrate on that because that just restricts everything you do. “We don’t want to wrap her up in cotton wool as I’d rather she had a good life than no real life at all which would be really disappointing.”

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