At the hospital, we describe disease to
our patients as sickness. If they have chronic kidney disease requiring
dialysis we say they have the kidney sickness. If their blood counts are low and cannot clot properly it is said that their blood is sick. However often our
patients tell us that they have the home sickness.
Social dislocation is the primary barrier
to access to health in the Territory. Patients are required to move hundreds
of kilometres to receive treatment often requiring them to be away from the
home communities and families in the very long term. For a culture that doesn’t
have the context to understand illness this way and one that emphasises
connection to land, family and community, such distances are not just physical
and are increasingly insurmountable. Treatment choices are therefore not so simple.
They become choices of the living or the ‘finishing up’. So moving to Darwin may 'save' your life but
not rescue the quality of it. Depression, hazardous substance use and poor
adherence to treatments become mainstay issues. The home sickness ensues.
There is no simple remedy for this. There
are a lack of solutions for the greater issues. We try our best to listen but our
languages and contexts do not reconcile. The home
sickness ensues.
For the first time in four months I too have
felt the home sickness. It is unnervingly raw.
Two friends spent a week with me sharing my
top-end lifestyle. I have made some wonderful friends up here but it was
refreshing to have old friendships around, if only for a bit, laughing at old jokes,
crying at new ones and enjoying long walks and chats that transcend time and
memories apart.
Another dear friend became a dad for the
first time. The pure excitement and love is palpable even from afar. He will be
a fantastic dad, one who will hold his daughter close no matter what she faces.
There is actually no need to wish this for him when you know it will simply be a
reality.
And finally my grandmother was diagnosed
with metastatic colon cancer this week. There is no way to describe the
difficulty you feel when you hear the unspoken sadness and pain in your close
family’s voices many miles away. But Bobba herself has been accepting of this with an uncanny sense of calm and resilience. I
believe deep down she has known for some time, like many cancer patients who just
know. It is strange though when that patient is your Bobba and you, on the
other side of the country, are holding other elderly patients’ hands thinking
they are your grandmother.
Culture. Family. Friendship. Community. Distance. The home
sickness ensues.
