I’ve spoken briefly about my health and the health system, but I haven’t spoken about being made redundant by AUT.
Redundancy is always a shitty process, but AUT still managed to make it about as bad as it could possibly have been. Not just for me but for all of those made redundant at the same time.
Hundreds of us.
I would most certainly cherish the simple email I received from Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Damon Salesa acknowledging my seventeen years’ service, along with the hundreds of hours of extra work putting all my papers online during Covid while caring for domestic students at home and for those in rarified time zones from around the world – Germany, China, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and across the Pacific.
I would also value the ‘thank you for your service’ email from my Dean, Professor Pare Keiha QSO, and the one from my head of school Dr Warren Goodsir, except I heard nothing from any of them, not an email, a text, or a phone call.
Zilch.
And, how about this, our school – The School of Hospitality and Tourism – couldn’t even run to a morning tea to say goodbye to staff with over one hundred years collective service.
Hospitality?
I fib though.
I did actually hear from Emeritus Professor Pare Keiha QSO, my dean, who emailed me with the following, and I quote ‘there was a time when we valued teachers, but we don’t now, get over it.’
Yes, there was ‘history’ with Professor Keiha, that’s true. I know stuff, and he’s aware I know stuff, but knowing and telling are two different things … maybe when I write my book.
Until then, I’ll retain my personal integrity and say nothing.
One of the really negative spin-offs of redundancy was that I lost access to the excellent AUT Medical Centre, the staff who had looked after me through thick and thin for each of my seventeen years service. The counsellors had been brilliant with my students (and Andrea with me), the nurses were magic, and my doctors, Dr Mila Hill and latterly Dr Valentina Kirova-Veljanovska, uniformly and consistently magnificent.
When I approached Vice Chancellor Salesa to see if counselling was available for me to deal with the personal shite associated with redundancy, I was resoundingly told no.
Disappointing, especially coming from an organisation that had, prior to Salesa grasping the reins, prided itself on genuinely caring for its people. Thank you Derek McCormack and Linda O’Neill.
So, I found myself back trying to find a new GP. Not that easy at the best of times but, for an ageing transgender woman with unique needs, nigh on impossible, so I used my inimitable skills in self-delusion and pretended I didn’t need anything or anyone and did absolutely nothing.
Then my prescription ran out and I was forced to go looking.
I wanted a woman doctor who would be OK with someone like me (not all are) but most medical centres don’t work like that anymore, you make an appointment, and you take who you get.
After a good search I found a centre that was overtly inclusive with doctors happy to work with the rainbow, so I scrolled through the team CVs. It turned out that I knew one of the staff which was a nice connection. I spoke with him (he’s lovely) and after some chats I was accepted as a patient and had my first appointment. My new doctor is fantastic – she’s fierce (just like Mila and Valentina were) and I get the finger-wagging when I need it. Which is often. She’s fabulous.
So, I’m set.
At one point, a couple of months ago, I was experiencing quite severe pain in my abdomen and in my shoulder. Contrary to Cushla’s sage advice, I consulted Dr Google and discovered that I had every illness known to mankind and a few others as well. I was reminded that I have a large number of internal organs that can get very sick very quick and cause serious issues for people who spend too much time on the internet because the internet itself is a transmissible disease, is highly infectious, contagious, and especially so at three in the morning which is when the internet infects all my organs and when I access the internet for medical advice.
Apologies for the length of that last sentence but it does reflect the overwhelming sense of panic I felt, and, to some extent, still feel. Internet cancer had infected my liver, my spleen, my pancreas, my stomach, and all my abdominal bits and I needed to have all of this confirmed by my real doctor tout de suite before I sat down to make my will, said baebae, closed my eyes, and walked off into Simeon Brown’s speed mad motorway traffic.
So I took a deep breath and made an appointment with my doctor who took me seriously and was able to book me in for scans at no cost. Normally they cosy galzillions so I was more than grateful for this. This is important for me as I have only my superannuation to live on.
The scans were done around midday Thursday of that week and, while taking Finn to the airport to travel to Australia for archery coaching early the next afternoon, I had three missed calls from my doctor. Naturally, I panicked again. I waited until he was on the plane before I called the centre at around 3 pm on the Friday to get the inevitable bad news.
Having scans and x-rays and all the detritus of medical paraphernalia that goes with being elderly is quite normal, even for me for whom ‘normal’ is not a normal word.
What isn’t normal, however, is to have a scan and within 18 hours to hear from your doctor with the results. It implies that the reason the results need to be transmitted to you, the scanee, so quickly is because they contain terrible news that needs to be conveyed to you before your imminent death probably as soon as the next day.
Some people might panic in a situation like that, and, as I’m sure you’ve worked out, I am certainly one of them. When I spoke to the nurse, she said an appointment had been made for me for Monday morning at 9am and, despite my persistence, she would give me no further information.
Nothing.
Not a jot.
(Sometimes you just hate people behaving professionally, don’t you?)
Well, I do.
Now, while I love the medical centre and my doctor, the idea that I could have an appointment within 24 hours of the scans being returned did not fill my heart with glee as it clearly meant not all was well, and that I probably wasn’t either.
In my brain it meant the end was not just nigh but incredibly, imminently, ominously looming.
So, over the weekend with no evidence whatsoever, I became completely convinced that I had all of the illnesses I’d already imagined and heaps of others as well, undiagnosed, unnamed, unspecified, unidentified and undiscovered, even on the internet. Not only did I have them, but they were all terminal, and I was clearly on the way out.
Cushla just shook her head and made dinner.
Finn fletched his arrows.
After two days of thinking that I may not even survive until my appointment, the appointment came, and my doctor told me, in her unique Spanish way, that the scans were all clear.
Except for one, that is, which had a mark on it, which wasn’t necessarily anything to worry about, but naturally, since that time, I have worried about that pretty relentlessly. She, without any sense of the comic potential in the situation, said the scans had been difficult to complete because I’m so fat and I had too much gas.
I refute this. Absolutely. Wholly, entirely, and utterly.
Especially the gas bit.
Cushla managed an eyeroll, and Finn just smirked.
After all, my farts are legendary. Just ask the cat.
Dr Maria explained that, just to clear the air, I would need a CT scan (I’ve had those before) to make sure that everything to do with the pancreas was kapai.
She said she’d organise it, and she did.
I’ve had the CT scan now, six days ago, and we should know the result in a couple of days, that’ll confirm, once and for all, whether there’s anything to be concerned about.
Without intending to, I’ve somehow managed to turn a potential personal tragedy with the associated whānau dramas into a comedy and ultimately into a farce – as would seem to be my way. The good news is that it would appear that my bits are mostly working well but we’ll see.
It’s been a good process. I’ve never spent much time contemplating my mortality, but this set of challenges has given me more than enough time to reflect on the future however short or long that may be.
And I’ll find out maybe as early as tomorrow.
UPDATE: I didn’t. Its seven days later and I’ve still heard nothing.
One thing for sure, Henry David Thoreau was right, ‘live your life, do your work, then take your hat.’
Hat on, ready to go!
dykiegirl 