His manner is strange from the get-go. He doesn’t look me in the eye; he looks at his desk or off to the side of me as if I’m not really there.
And somehow, within two minutes of my arrival in this small, brown office in a provincial family medical centre, after briefly inquiring about my family medical history and without asking me why I want an abortion, he tells me I don’t meet the criteria. He won’t certify the abortion, because “this is not, and should not be, an abortion on demand society”.
Read MoreHad the operation happened within 14 days - as it was meant to - Peter could have expected to return to work within two days.
Because it didn’t, Peter is missing half his face, sleeps in a van, cannot work, and lives off $400 a week. He was given a 10 per cent chance of surviving five years. That five years just expired; he’s now on borrowed time.
Read More“This isn’t the life I thought I’d have,” Caroline says quietly as we drive away from the hospital. “I loved working. I have this fantasy that I’ll have a job again one day, a career, and I’ll come home and kick my heels off, Jarrod will have a beer for me and he’ll be a stay-at-home dad, which has always been his dream. Dinner will have been slow cooking for hours. Our kids will be happy,” she says, pushing away tears.
Read MoreKate’s still angry. “As someone with complex health issues, to have ‘breast is best’ rammed down your throat past the point of reason is crazy, as is not discussing formula. This cookie-cutter stance doesn’t take people with health issues into account.”
And there’s a trickle-down effect. Kate, who visits an Auckland hospital six-weekly for her pain condition, once pulled out a bottle in the Westfield St Lukes parents’ room. “One of two mums there said, pointedly, ‘These chairs should only be for breastfeeding mothers.’ I left, then started bawling.”
Read More“It’s just blown up. Every second person here is either using it, has used it, or is affected in some way. Everyone of all ages. The youngest I know of was 11 when he started using. He’s 15 now and is still chasing it. He hasn’t really had a childhood.”
Read MoreI wasn't sobbing so much for myself as for my girls, Alex who was then six, and Rosie, three. I was sobbing because of my fear for what might become of them if the disease was to progress rapidly — and who is to know how quickly, or how slowly, it will progress, we only know that it will — and I might not be in a fit state to look after them and provide for them. Would I be able to run with my children? Would we be going on the long-promised "someday-when-my-ship-comes-in" trip to Disneyland with me in a wheelchair? How would I be when the children graduate from university?
Read MoreA couple of weeks after her diagnosis, Mum was visited by a fieldworker from the MNDA. The fieldworker, an older woman whose daughter had died of MND, made the mistake of saying she’d bring along a hospice nurse “next time”. My mother was infuriated. “I’m not dying of motor neurone disease,” she shot back. “I’m living with it.”
Read MoreThe LifePod’s journey, as recounted by Avery, started when he kept seeing broken-down incubators sitting in corridors in Nepal. Determined to do something about it, he started tinkering in his garage.
Unlike a lens or a muesli bar, an incubator is a high-stakes medical device, whose failure could result in death.
Read MoreIt’s Douglas’s birthday. I have a small present to give him then some other presents on the following day when, for practical reasons we decide to hold a small birthday. Again for practical reasons – I can no longer really manage a cooked meal – we will have Indian takeaways and some Moet. This is not how we expected it to be. But this is how it has turned out.
Read MoreHe was a ‘P baby’, born to Pam’s daughter, who used heavily throughout her pregnancy.
Pam brought him home from the hospital when he was a 1.8kg (4lb) newborn with a cleft palate and a cleft lip. When he wasn't asleep – which was most of the time – he screamed.
Pam's daughter was in the mental health ward and unmoved by the baby’s pitiful condition. "Shit happens," she said, according to Pam.
Tears roll from Pam’s eyes.
"There's no hope for her. She's fried her brain. You can tell from her speech. She was a beautiful, brainy young woman.”
Read MoreWeatherly's sudden arrival on the women's downhill scene in January came as a surprise to some in mountain biking - until the end of last year she'd been known as Anton and raced men.
She'd quietly let a few of the other women know she was making the switch and they seemed supportive. But when she won an event in Rotorua by more than 30 seconds, it set off a firestorm of online discussion and calls for her to be excluded.
Read MoreHer sister takes her shopping on Thursdays at Pak N Save on Lincoln Rd (she used to go to the one in Henderson, but the aisles were too narrow and she ended up having panic attacks), and on Sunday nights she sometimes plucks up courage to phone Lindsay Henare's popular Whanau Show on Turanga FM and request a song. She's addicted to Sudoku, and Facebook; it's not uncommon for her to be up till 3am, sometimes later.
The panic attacks, the anxiety and depression – was she coping?
Read More“I’d climb over the fence and go and sit on the cricket pitch and watch the house to make sure it didn’t burn down. It was the only place I could go without hearing her screaming. I’d go down to get the groceries in the middle of the night and I swear, I’m in the car by myself but, by God, I can hear her and she’s screaming.”
Read MoreWhen Mum decided that the thing she wanted above all else was quiche, it was my job to make it for her. That it was Easter Sunday, and that all the shops were closed, didn’t strike her as particularly important.
So I made pastry from scratch. I baked it blind. I fried bacon, beat eggs and, sweating from the fluster of creating something appetising, I presented the quiche to my mum with pride.
She took a bite and immediately vomited.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing the plate away.
Read More“To me, it seems just an iPad on wheels, so what is the difference between an iPad reminding you to take your medication and this guy?” she says. “What they found with this guy is that people actually started having a relationship with it, because it reacts. They were obeying it. They didn’t want to disappoint the little guy so they were taking their medication. But with an iPad, you don’t care.
Read MoreThe study's first premises were in the Sunday School rooms at Knox Church Hall on Dunedin's main shopping street. I remember going with my mother when I was very young, awed by the staircase. We had fun. We did puzzles and ate slices of apple. I think the apple was morning tea, not a test, but who knows?
Read More"She’d just be living on the pipe with a needle in her arm and f*ck everything else. She was pretty much the reason I stopped smoking meth. It got f*cking real, real quick.”
At one point, Brad and his friends broke the woman out of a psychiatric unit. “At the time we thought it was brilliant, hilarious—the greatest thing. You’re young, dumb and flying. You feel six foot tall and bulletproof… She’s got a child now. She’s still on the pipe."
Read MoreAna-Carolina didn't get better. She didn't get worse. She didn't go home.
She got older and now, here she is, wearing Kitty Cat shoes that have never been walked in, all silvery-sparkled with green and red lights that would flash were they to be stomped on the ground.
Read MoreMost of the victims were Māori or Pasifika and from the margins of society - the homeless, mentally ill and unemployed - and there seems to have been a muted response to the crisis from Government and the public.
"I wonder if we had 20 kids from wealthy families dying in a very short amount of time what the response would be," says Ross Bell, executive director of the Drug Foundation.
Read MoreI had no way of keeping time, and it seemed to pass incredibly slowly. The lights were always on, all night; there was no way to turn them off. I tried covering my face with the blanket to block them out. A person checking on me through the window called out that if I didn’t uncover my face, the blanket would be taken off me. I wouldn’t have slept even if I was in a more comfortable place and the lights were off. Going through withdrawal from sleeping pills has always left me unable to sleep for a few days. There are not many things more frustrating than being so tired but unable to fall asleep. I had broadly calmed down after an hour or two. I did not feel invincible anymore. The way I was treated made me feel small, powerless, and like an animal.
Read More