Nordocs Magazine Summer 20/21

Page 11

Review - Untethered by Robin Osborne BookBook Review Untethered – A Memoir A local health district wide project to address this issue would improve patient care on the North Coast. “E-med Ed” has flourished this year. Unable to gather together, even in small groups, education providers have embraced the online format. The RACGP, AMA, countless hospitals and even Nordocs have run their own programs. NorDocs has held four meetings this year on the subjects of carotid vascular disease, new approaches to psoriasis management, the multi-disciplinary approach to breast cancer and an update on restrictive lung disease. The organisation will continue with the program on a monthly basis from February to June next year before reviewing the viability and acceptability of further “e-meetings”. A year ago nobody had ever heard the term “COVID-19” but the year of the rat has been difficult for many, fatal for some and tried the patience of citizens and politicians around the country and around the world. The upending of traditional approaches to issues has stimulated developments in many areas and doctors have taken to heart the quote of Winston Churchill, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.

Hayley Katzen Ventura 367 pp The ‘untethering’ of North Coast resident Hayley Katzen from her previous life began with migrating from South Africa in 1989, at the age of 22, and settling in Sydney to undertake a law degree. As she often reminds us in this introspective memoir she was - and of course still is - a white, middle-class, Jewish woman who had left a country with an racist and turbulent past, and an uncertain future. Coming to realise she was lesbian represented another phase of her untethering from the conventional family and conflicted society within which she had grown up. Now, she could be free, not least sexually: “I’d cut my wild mane short in the hope I’d look more ‘dykey’ and find my place in Sydney’s lesbian community.” Later, she headed north to the Northern Rivers, finding a lecturing job at Southern Cross University’s Lismore campus and entering into the area’s gay lifestyle. At a Tropical Fruits dance she met a woman “with deep brown eyes and a shaved head” who talked of ‘truckies’ knots’ and lived in converted stables in the hinterland. “Where the hell are we?”, Katzen asked a friend driving her to the birthday party of Jen, the woman with whom she would form a loving and lasting, if at times complicated, relationship, largely because of their vastly different backgrounds. This would be another untethering – moving in with a (wo)manual worker was

way out of her cultural comfort zone: “My parents were middle-class Jewish professionals and intellectuals who’d never done a day’s manual labour… Jen’s broad and calloused hands were marked by abrasions from fencing, digging, gardening, building and cattle work.” She recalls, “I’d counted four pubs and three butchers as we drove along the main street of the small country town.” “’Casino,” the friend said, “The beef capital.” “Where even the radio station’s named for cattle?” I said as I read out a billboard: COW FM”. In time Katzen adjusts to being an ‘excity girl’, bemusedly describing dinner parties where urbane friends recoil from Jen’s stories of farm practices such as euthanising animals. She forms friendships with locals, realising that the years hadn’t only “demystified life in the bush… [but] seeped under my skin along with memories of blackened fingernails and bruises, scars and splinters… This was what I knew now more than Shabbat dinners or city laneways.” Drawing on her legal skills she became active in the ultimately successful campaign against CSG mining, penning a lengthy submission to the state government, and, with her story turning full circle, participating in a ‘Lock the Gate’ float in Casino’s beef week parade. By then she seemed well and truly untethered from her past life.

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Articles inside

UCRH team wins $1M grant

1min
page 38

Royal Commission highlights disability horror show

3min
page 37

What’s your QI?

6min
pages 33-34

The breakout that never was

8min
pages 39-40

No silver bullet when treating shoulder injuries

6min
pages 35-36

Book Reviews

10min
pages 30-32

Falls Risk in Older Patients

3min
page 29

NSW Health program for new fathers

3min
pages 27-28

Child vax figures highest on record – Minister

4min
page 24

Ridding Papua New Guinea of smoking

5min
page 23

Every picture tells a story

6min
pages 21-22

Self-management can help reduce men’s PMD

3min
page 19

No news wouldn’t be good news

4min
page 20

Humans, Animals and Covid19

3min
page 18

The ancient ‘didge’ helps with modern challenges

2min
page 17

Here today - gone today for joint surgery patients

3min
page 16

Year of the e-Rat

4min
page 10

Psychological issues still our commonest concern

2min
page 14

Book Review - Untethered

3min
pages 11-12

Telehealth ‘revolution’ to continue into 2021

4min
page 13

A lifetime in psychiatry

7min
pages 8-9

Whither the PHN?

4min
page 7

Summer 2020 -2021, Editorial

9min
pages 3-4

Has a superfood become an enviro-vandal?

3min
page 15
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