Dearest Dad

My earliest memories of you are the best.
You used to walk me around the garden,
In the evening as the sun was setting,
And pointed out spider webs.
All busy spinning, preparing for the night,
You taught us that these tiny creatures, created something beautiful and need no fright.
I watched you prune our roses, and airlayer our tempermental trees.
You loved to talk about ,plants the birds and the bees.
You loved to read books –your favorite science fiction.
you also watched cartoons ...an inherited addiction

You enjoyed the company of ur friends...love and laughter you never lacked...people of all walks of life ...u never were siu to shout a beer and pat their backs
Long after you left Samoa...people would still ask if Kevin was my dad
The random taxi driver or shop keepr
Would eagerly tell stories of outings you and them had had
You loved your motorcycles...
And have had a few accidents as well.
We brought ur bike back from nz...Anton beefed ut up and you were very proud.

Somewhere in our childhood.
You and mum could no longer exist,
You went separate ways, and there were some hard days…but we new it was for the best.
Dad you were aways so hard to figure out. There was so much history of you and your family
we felt a bit left out,
because you could never speak, of you father or your childhood.
Like it was such a painful memory..that could never be understood.
You were a slave to your drink. You would never admit it. But we could always see it
Alcohol use disorder –you met all the criteria…
Dad, You had all the signs- you did. But You did not want to hear it. And you would never admit it.
It did not make you an evil person, it did not mean you loved us less….it just meant that you had terrible mood swings like 10 women with PMS.
I used to describe you jokingly, as dr jekyl mr hyde
There was a before alcohol you, who was decent and withstanding
And there was the after…a complete extreme makeover..who was sarcastic and moody and overly emotional…like I said PMS…. I always wished you'd be less, of hyde and more of Jekyll

Having you as a father has been a roller coaster. Of trying to understand and accept.
That not all families are picture perfect .
That we all , are only human. That everyone has strengths and weaknesses.
That despite everything, what was important, was that you loved us all so much and never ever failed telling us…to the point where it could be an earsore…
but how lucky were we, to have a parent who unconditionally, showered us with praise and love- … never discouraged us from the man above,
Told us to do all that we wanted and all that we could.
All that was important and all that we should
Always told us you were proud… you boasted we were your kids aloud
For not always being a present parent you were always saying you were sorry,
But we only ever wanted you to be happy and not to worry.


Your last few months have not been easy…you’ve always been so tough
Watching your decline in health, has been heartbreaking for all of us
But you battled your illness like a solder. Most drs and nurses would often say.
How little you seemed to suffer, in all the usual ways.
You didn’t lose your hair after chemo…you trimmed down to a younger looking weight,
you got a tan…new teeth…you looked really great
IT was just this last month, when things were quite rough. You tried you best to hold on,
To the you that was you, determined and headstrong.

Your pain threshold was very high, and you were always concerned about imposing on others,
even when it was at your own cost of suffering.you didn’t want to be a bother
That was always been you dad…a beacon of strength no matter what.
You never cried, you never lied, you always made up your own mind,
You were always fearless, you looked after your family, you were tireless
, you lived life,, you gave it your all..up until mother nature took its toll

And even that…you battled ,headstrong, eyes closed, fists clenched…..determined not to let her take the best of you
Dad…you may not know it…you may not think it…but there is so much of you in me, in us…
From you we got our confidence, you were always our walking encyclopedia
You corrected our English and our grammar, and sometimes our teachers
from you I am fearless. From that day you dropped me off at school,
on the back of your motorcycle- looking Pretty cool
much to the astonishment of my teachers who had thought my parents were some bookworms
and not part of a motorcycle gang. and you told me that if any teacher dare hit me…
to come straight away and tell you and you would make them regret it ….
I was an 8 yr old silently fearless…because you were our hero…and nothing scared us.

As you leave us dad for your final malaga , I want you to know, that your life was well lived, you celebrated it in your journey, you loved you laughed, you shouted you cried . you were lucky enough to get married twice and have a handful of children and friends and acquaintances who all love you. You leave behind pieces of you in us. I want to thank you dad, for everything you have taught us, instilled in us, imparted for us…for without you…we would not be, the people we are today.

Manuia lou malaga Dad, and as I have always said to those who have left us before, this is not goodbye…it is just a see you later.

the concept of Falling

Doc I have fallen….

In my 10 years of practicing medicine and certainly in the last 8 yrs in Samoa, I have had a mixed relationship with our peoples ideas if sickness and disease. Especially when it comes to , local superstitions and on some occasion local healers. At the moment, I do feel there is a big gap between traditional and western medicine. The two do not always work hand in hand and perhaps there is a road there to improve this in our health system. I think us western drs tend to see much more of the  dire scale of things when it comes unwell patients who were previously treated by local healers. But not being able to actually quantify the possible help that these traditional healers give is perhaps what leaves us ?ignorant.

Anyways, back to my topic. Since I began practicing in Samoa, I have often been dumbfounded by the things our people put weight on when it comes to a person being sick.  A classic example which is at the top of my ‘leaves me bewildered’ list is this concept of falls- leading to all sorts of disease. Even a simple skipped a step, landed on his bottom, type fall is often etched in the memories of mums, or children of elderly people. A common scenario in my clinic is a young person being brought in, who sits there breathless, and when he coughs his chest rattles away like the v8 engine of an elcamino ( and later on is found to have double pneumonia) , and the parents are spending 15minutes explaining, that a month ago he fell. On the ground. He hit his left arm and chest. There was no bruising, or scratches sustained. He cried and got up. Since then he was fine. But NOW…now hes feverish and is not eating and is tired…and of most importance is that I take into consideration the fact that a month ago he fell.

They completely ignore the fact that…his nose became runny a week ago, he developed fevers, a cough followed and now he is breathless. No, that information was not readily provided until dragged out of them…instead most of their focus and concern is the fall and fevers and how the two are absolutely intertwined. 

I spend a lot of time trying to teach people some really basic rules. Like pay attention to symptoms…signs from certain parts of the body that may indicate something is wrong with that part (ie if you are coughing you may have an infection of the throat/chest if you are spewing from both ends maybe a tummy bug  etc ). Unfortunately there are so many common scenarios amongst Samoan kids that a general immunity to those symptoms can sometimes result in a complete dissociation of what is actually wrong with the person. An example is…in a big family…there are often..snotty nosed kids running around. From time to time  those snotty nosed kids may ‘cough’…but generally…these symptoms are ignored as just normal things for kids. Luckily, kids here are pretty robust and Im sure are exposed to all the elements from a young age..often most viral colds and coughs resolve without actually needing much intervention anyways. But when they do deteriorate, it bewilders me how parents continue to ignore these worsening symptoms and instead are focused on age old myths and beliefs … I can understand how if you fell off the roof of your house or the back of a moving car and broke a few bones  or even developed some  internal bleeding -you'd be pretty beat up and sick. But to not even have a scratch and still believe this could riddle one so ill…and so long ago?? Baffles me….

I even heard of a family, whos young child (2 yrs old) had died mysteriously. When I asked a relative what had happened (ie had he been unwell etc) the answer was…well, we don’t know but when he was a young baby, he fell out of his cot and so we think it was from that time that he must have started to get sick and resulted in his death ( a year and a half later?) …..

So, my point is- people , please help me spread the word..... If you fall, you can physically do harm to yourself AT THAT TIME. And it will be visible and physical (most of the time- unless you are unlucky enough to be a tiny percent of people who donk their heads and have a small internal bleed- which will manifest usually within the next few days/weeks at most!) ….it will not kill you a year later…or make you cough a week later…or give you this fever 3 months later. Lets stop the cycle of this belief right here now so that people can start WAKING UP…and paying attention to what their kids/loved ones/relatives might ACTUALLY have.

Uma loa iga. Have a great weekend guys

the sucky part of life...

 I wish had cable TV and I wish if it were here, that it aired Dr Phil. I love that guy. As cheesy as he may be sometimes, I always have so many "epiphany" "Aha!" moments were suddenly..the challenges in life start making sense...

this is one of my challenges living in the bush. Not having my people...mah girls who I usually rant and rave and talk about life and its dealt hand. I know the poor hubby has probably had enough of my rants. And to be honest...men and women talk about such things differently  :(

Lately....Ive been balancing a lot of pretty lousy news. Im trying pretty hard to get my head around it all. Process and figure out what I am meant to be doing. One of those lemons that life has thrown at me is illness. I jinxed things by mentioning good health in my last post....and then in the last few months a couple of people very dear to me have been challenged with poorly health. The problem is both live so very far away and it'd cost an arm and a leg to go over...not a trip I /we could be making often so .....now staring at the wall trying to figure out what to do......

Then, I dont know how...but lately Ive become the recipient of news of men who have cheated on their women. I hate this. I hate being the bearer of such news. If  I had known the conversation where it had come out was headed that way I would've excused myself politely and gone to the toilet. I don't know what to do with news like that. Suddenly...the boyses it involves are now appearing to me in a whole new light.  A red light.  A "wtf" light....because I simply cant explain it.These are people I respect and admired and enjoyed company with occassionally.  Why would you marry someone...vow to honor them and spend the rest of your lives with them.... and then cheat on them?I mean..to me...excuses that go round are just pathetic.... sometimes its a poorly sexual life...or a setting in of a boring routine....whatever.... to me... you commit and you honor that commitment. Its called through sickness and in health, through good times AND bad....You can chose to push on through your frustrations ...marriage is a rollercoaster and its not always high....if you love someone you respect them by knowing how to do just that...honor and respect your marriage. if you honestly have fallen out of love then get a divorce and make it clean...dont dribble drabble in infedelity because thats like dragging your partners face through shit before splitting up.   Dumb things like that affect peoples mental health and outlook on life. And its just dumb and stupid. Eh...ka fefe e ia Dr Phil.lol.


ok, thats all for now. Love your wives and your husbands. Love your family. Because you dont know when one day they may no longer be a part of your life, and you are crying a river on your lonesome because it hurts.
Tofa soifua . uuma ii na

living life and learning:)

There is nothing more humbling in life, then experience. This  is something that 10 yrs ago, fresh out of medschool..ready to ‘take on the world’  -- I cast little thought to. I think there is something about hormones, puberty, going through adolescence that sometimes overarms us as human beings. Makes us think that we know it all and can do it all ( yes , actually I can Remember being that fiapoko little 16yr old lol) . That the world was indeed our oyster and we were one of the best fisherman ready to indulge!!lol…10 yrs ago- “old people” or “older people” were just that. Older people. Apparently they were ‘wiser’ then me and us at the time, and maybe that was so. Maybe they had learnt more etc…but I did not think I was ‘that’ different then a ‘me in 10 yrs time’ or a collegue at the hospital who was 10 yrs my senior (!!)  I thought I was fresh, well studied...had had 6 yrs of medical school experience under my belt (which was quite long or so I thought!)  and  with a bit of practice would be ready to take on anything!

In the last 10 yrs since stepping onto the soil of my homeland, having completed my medicine, I have never been so whipped before in my life. The things that I have seen, dealt with, cried for, yelled at, laughed with, encouraged, sympathized, lost my temper with, I can now honestly say I was vastly unprepared for - and having gone through each and every one of those moments, I can now vouch that I am indeed ,a whole nother person. A more "experienced''  wiser more worldly - older me. And although at many times in the last century I have felt way out of my league and undertrained, under-knowledged, underskilled and abandoned in the bush, there is a great lesson in life to be learnt from experience.

 Every time I realise that life has yet again, revealed the truth about something I thought I already knew but obviously  had not…I am always astonished. At how vastly inexperienced and naïve, I had just been about something and not too long ago. It is almost scary to think of how immature I actually was ...and immature more in the sense of approach/understanding/ability to exude confidence with and not the cheeky little shit sense lol:) And how humbled I am to now truly be able to appreciate that experience , that condition, illness, event, emotion,occassion…with a new set of eyes.

Then my own personal  experiences like having gone through childbirth, and medical investigations…and others experiences - surgeries, watched people die of terrible things like incurable illnesses, and heart attacks, and heart failure, sepsis. Things like having to have some procedure done on myself, like an IV, a  lumber puncture, a caesarean section- and then realising all those times I counselled others on what to expect, was completely inept  for what I actually went through and felt- and therefore felt like I had been a fraudster in all those previous years!OMG useless!! Now instead, I  just hold peoples hands and layout the reality of what they will endure and there is  a sense of calm now that I know a little bit more about something to be able to counsel someone with ease…. Having gone through it myself  Is truly, the best way to truly make you a decent counsellor of what to expectJ

Experience has opened my eyes out to far beyond the horizon. I have seen things that have crept out of all corners of our community that I had no idea about before. That no one had prepared me for and certainly had never been exposed to in  my upbringing. I have seen the ugly side of poverty, of people not afforded the same opportunities to health, people with mislaid beliefs of health problems and how to treat them, and then watched them watch their loved ones, children die as a result. The experiences one has no option but to choke down at times in practicing medicine in Samoa are challenging, humbling, frustrating all rolled up into one. 

The worst of all  experiences of course , is seeing  a person die on me, whom I did not expect to die. And then the wrath of the following days guilt, that I might have missed something, not done more, or even contributed to somehow ….the death of a patient.  There have been days I have prayed for comfort, for people I have cared for…and for myself too. There have been days I have thought “THAT’S IT..i can’t do this anymore’…the challenge is too big…there’s not enough of us- its ridiculous to expect people to work like this!…not enough resources not enough support not enough anything to make this job easier, ideal or even safe  for me…but then I think…well, that goes for everyone doesn’t it? All my collegues…young and old…fresh out of school or here 100 yrs…they are all trudging on in this environment.And its not that no ones trying to change it. Its just htat change in Samoa for some reason is like pushing an elephant. Its not impossible its just ridiculously hard and slow.  And here I am crying about it not being easier. Nothing is easy in life. And maybe my perceived hardships suck…but at the end of the day. There is just not enough drs  here. And if I remove myself that’s one less then the whole lot of ‘little’ that there was before. Right now there’s 6. 6 drs ( and that’s no 6 GPs, that’s 2 gps and 4 hosp staff)  looking after tens of thousands of Savaiians. So  who is ever going to help make it easier for the next person if not me?

 Then,this whole concept of maintaining ones distance and keeping yourself separate from your patients and their issues, problems, health concerns  is something I have never been able to do. I don’t think it is really possible in Samoa due to the small size of our country and everyone knowing everyone. Even if I try to keep my distance it always comes back to me through- my family telling me ( I had seen their aunties best friend and they have put all their faith in me to sort out their health issues) or a collegue at work,  a neighbours aunt, the gardeners dad….at the end of the day the connection somehow is always presented to me …that there is some closeness of this person and therefore I must work extra hard because not just the patient has expectations…but now everyone else is awaiting news too !!  

 I try very hard to keep my sanity by asking that people see me in clinic and not, on the road, at the restaurant, parked on the road at frankies or at some formal event I have attended. That’s where I do draw the line and get a bit titchy much to the disappointment of my hubby sometimes. But Im pretty feisty when it comes to seeing people “properly” and examining them properly  in a formal setting, with all my tools etc and notes  and can ask the sensitive questions etc. And not just guessing and pissing in the wind, outside of the carpark at frankies, because they aren’t going to pull their pants down to show me the rash (obviously) but instead want to just describe it and me give them the magic cream lol. No, when it comes to examining people its always gonna be in my examination room please.  Unfortunately me trying to educate people about that always ends up looking more like Im being unhelpful and stubborn L but oh well. Im sure there are worse names to be called.

Anyways, I am ever grateful that to date, the good man above has blessed me and my own immediate family good health. Im pretty bad with stressing about people I know when they get sick (only because of all the worst case scenarios that play through my head and the lack of resources to be able to rule half of those scenarios out confidently!!)  and if my kids had the misfortune of getting sick…I might just pack up house and move to NZ for the most trivial symptom. Yes, hubby be warned lol. Anyways…its tough times in Samunda but I /we do try our best. 

One of the funniest (well, not funny but maybe slightly hysteria inducing) things about some people I come across here is their lack of knowledge of what IS NOT available in Samoa from a  medical perspective. Like people that rock on up and are like…so I have this symptom bla bla and so I saw on TV  in America  this test and had a talk to my family and am here coz I want that done now…yup …something really expensive and specialist requiring and probably wont be available in Samoa for another 20 yrs…is not available here friend…much to the shock horror of this patient. Then they are like ‘can I see the specialist then’…which again, is no because Samoa does not have one of those specialists…shock horror. 

Specialists do not fall from the sky nor are easy to find. It takes years and years to train to become a specialist (and that’s like exams and stuff and not just years of work experience!) not to mention is really freaken hard…there is an infinite amount of material to learn about the human body and disease, current treatments, drugs, investigations etc....its changing all the time..and mostly you have to be a little bit of a genius to complete …and when I say years and years…like 12 yrs or more…many people give up  or fail before completing. If it’s a woman often life gets in the way and they have babies and a family before completing…sometimes the ones that do complete,  get an epiphany at the end and realise they’ve slugged half their lives away at this degree working night shifts and crap hours, missing out on society  friends and family  to get there that the pot of gold more lucrative careers offered in developed countries  at the end of it all- becomes more important then returning to a peanut pay packet and challenged work environment at home (esp if you’ve started a family during the process) etc… anyways…my point is…its freaken hard. At to be honest, Samoa at present only has a handful of actually fully qualified and practising in hospital specialists.   Everything else we don’t have we  depend on a visiting volunteer to come help with. That’s the truth on that issue right thur (I have just remembered an article in the paper on Sunday that got my knickers in a twist because a general member of the public was complaining about not having access to a specialist after a visit to  ED) 

 Anyways. That’s were life is at , at the moment. Thats the truth right thur. If you didnt know - now you do lol:) and a bit of a rant and rave from me as usual! I hope everyone's been having an awesome day week month. Its almost up so live it up. Til the next blog.

ciao