A Poem Can Get you Through Here is the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem I learnt off by heart whilst under the mask having my radiation treatments.It is called The Windhover.		The Windhover	To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,	5
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion	10
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
My very own Windhover with Moon at Otakou Golf  Course.

Never Mind Golfer's Elbow what about Writer's Block?

 

 Well it has been so long since my last entry you may have been wondering if the Golfer's Elbow injury I managed to trigger whilst play St Clair, Dunedin in the snow has taken me out of the game altogether?

No No Not at all!

 I have been working very hard with my osteopath and being prudent and having plenty of rest between games. Also wearing a support bandage which has really helped.

And thanks to Mark at Economy Golf , those Graphite shafted clubs I mentioned last time have been really terrific at taking some of the strain off my elbow too.


No....
The real problem is I have had Writer's Block.

Each time I sit down at the computer to continue the story I feel too tired and think oh no I will do it tomorrow  
and..so.. another few days go by and now I am really behind.

Have a guess..How many courses do you think I have played by now? 

24?   25?  26?

 

So why can't I write?

I left the story in Dunedin.I was telling you about the highs and lows of the courses I played in the Edinburgh of the South.

I also alluded to the emotional component of my trip down to Dunedin . And that is where the block has arisen.


Returning to Dunedin was quite hard for me as the place had become awash in difficult memories accumulated back in 2008 when I went there for Radiation and Chemotherapy post surgery.

Although I wanted to go to Dunedin to reclaim that fair city as one of my favourite places, at the same time I was afraid those oh so vivid memories of that dark time would sweep over me like some great tide and the undertow of them would pull me under.
In some ways this is the curse of having a good memory.
Many years ago my good friend Rhonda taught me a technique of heightening your memory of a given event by the conscious use of all your senses i.e asking yourself what can you smell?what can you hear? what can you taste?how are you moving? Really tends to put an event into 3D high resolution focus!

This is great for happy memories!
 But alas I forgot to turn down the volume for unpleasant events!

The hospital times and the radiation treatments unfortunately remain very vivid in my memory and when I let my guard down(i.e when I am asleep or tired etc) I am fully back in those moments. 

I thought going to Dunedin and getting to log in some more happy memories would help to dilute the not so good ones.

Truly golf is so good for so many things!

In 2008 when I went down there for treatment I imagined it was going to be a bit of a fun time after all the surgery.
My lovely partner,Wilma had managed to secure  us a fantastic short term rental in a suburb called Sunshine(with generous financial backing from my folks to enable her to take two months off work to support and care for me.) A beautiful house with views up the harbour so I could look out over the water all day and watch the light play on the hills between short trips to the hospital(only 15 
minutes away).
 There would be plenty of time for me to show her all the beauties of Dunedin- Aramoana,Tunnel Beach,Taieri Mouth,Portobello,The Gardens etc etc.
I would get a seasons pass to the Butterfly House at the Museum and go there everyday after my radiation treatment to make it bearable.
And it would just be lovely for the two of us to have all that time together after  the drama of the surgeries .

The view from the Sunshine house.

 

Hmmmmmmmmm!

Well,not surprisingly that of course was not how it went!

From day one of treatment I started vomiting.
That fifteen minute drive to the hospital became an interminable nightmare trip.
 The light reflected off the harbour through the windows at Sunshine became unbearable for my eyes.
The notion of taking Wilma out to see some of the special places of 'my' Dunedin receded rapidly as I descended into my own private hell and that unique 'selfishness' of the very ill took over.
It was a very hard and lonely time for us both in very different ways.
Any energy I had was entirely focused on just steeling my nerve for the next radiation session and getting through the panic and claustrophobia that came at the thought of being bolted down to the table in my mask. 
And Wilma? The hell of being beside someone you love who is desperately ill,vomiting all the time and there is nothing you can really do to help.The first couple of weeks she tried valiantly to make food to tempt my ever dwindling appetite and to try and keep my weight up.An exercise that was very disheartening for her as each dish she produced was rejected after a couple of mouthfuls.

Preparing me for treatment.

Screwing down the mask.

Correct alignment took time.

  

 











 It was not long before I became too ill for Wilma to manage me at the house in Sunshine.
I had to be hospitalized in an isolation room.
I think it was a huge relief in many ways for Wilma to know I was in the care of the nurses at Ward 8C, now at least she got to have breaks away from me and my misery although she continued to spend much of her days with me.


I had a new view!

My view from hospital.

 And some new tubes and drip lines!

I could hear the Westpac helicopter landing on the roof above me.
I could smell the horrid liquid food they put through the nasal/gastric tube every three hours!
Taste? Even water tasted like corrugated cardboard spread with worm castings.
I knew exactly how many steps it took to walk various routes around the ward and out to the lifts and back. A walk I had to do after every feed to try and get some of the liquid to stay down.
But I did manage to go to every day of the treatment.
I got through the sessions in the mask by learning a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins phrase by phrase.Saying it slowly in time to the clicks of the machinery that indicated where I was up to in the progression of the treatment(twelve beams of radiation were passed through the head and neck area on the right side of my throat.) 
I visualized myself as a merlin(a bird of prey) with a jeweled hood over my head, carried on the arm of a red-haired lady in a green velvet dress - a falconer on horse back. I counted the beeps and awaited the moment when the lady took off my mask and I soared on an updraft of air,free at last.....counting the beeps until the treatment was over and the real mask was removed.


And I came out of hospital with a stomach peg(which I had for a year) . This made for interesting picnics! NOT!

So it was very good to go back to Dunedin and have some marvelous games of golf out and about on the Peninsula and to feel strong and able to do such a thing.

I bravely  went up to the Oncology Department and to Ward 8C to see if I could find any of the people involved in my treatment to thank them.

My knees were shaking and I was pouring with sweat being back in the hospital.

I managed to see the wonderfully warm and kind Radiation Oncologist in charge of my treatment regime. Hugs all round and heartfelt ones at that.She was genuinely pleased to see me and I enormously grateful to her for the respectful way she treated both Wilma and I during the time I was under her care.

Thanks Lyndal.

My only regret was being back in Dunedin, enjoying life and the city but without Wilma.

After I left the hospital I was very overwhelmed with emotion and shaking so much I had to go sit in a cafe for an hour and write a letter of Gratitude to my dear Wilma for the incredible loving support she gave me through that time.

She was my rock! And I certainly clung to her fiercely.

No doubt overbearing in my need at times.

That winter in Dunedin she wore a red shawl against the cold.

I remember how I looked for that flash of red through the haze of drug -induced stupors.

There she was sitting in the chair beside me as the chemo went into my bloodstream.

There she was coming down the corridor of the ward to see me each day.

There she was doing a jigsaw in the waiting room at oncology whilst I had my treatment.

And sometimes I watched from my hospital window as she walked back to the car to drive away to Sunshine.

Thank you Wilma for shining in the darkness.

And after all that re-visiting of the dark times I just had to go play a round of golf and take in the beauty of Dunedin.

Playing the 14th at St Clair.

 

Looking down to Tunnel Beach from 14th at St Clair.