Harvey | Northcote Point
“I was trained in reality therapy many moons ago, and essentially you work out what is real and what therefore defines you and doesn’t define you, and the problem is never a defining issue. The problem is always something that enables you to find something new about yourself.
It’s not an issue to say that I had a daughter with cystic fibrosis, and I refused to say she was a sick child; she was a normal kid with a problem. It’s the same with my eye; I’m a normal balding, fat older man who had a problem which had to be sorted, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t change who I am, but I will learn more about myself in working with the problem.
The challenge I’m thinking about is when I was diagnosed with some sort of a hole in my eye and it was a simple operation which required me to have my head face down for 10 days afterwards. I could not fly for three months, because I had a gas bubble in my eye while the hole repaired itself. I’m damned if I can think of the proper name of it. Molecular hole. I’m pretty sure it’s a molecular hole. That sounds about right.
I had a hole in my right eye. They took the gel out and replaced it with an air bubble, told me to put my head down for 10 days non-stop, which meant lying on my stomach, and then I couldn’t fly for three months because the gas bubble could not go above 2000 feet, and I was due to fly to Spain three weeks after the operation. My wife went, and I did not.
The name is molecular hole which is a hole that develops at the back of the iris, at the back of the eyeball. It’s an age factor and the gel separates from the retina. It’s slowly coming back to me. If I keep answering the question five times, I will get somewhere.
I come from Taranaki. I’m an introvert. I don’t like being in big crowds. My operation is an Anglican Priest, and probably the two things that really define who I am are getting married, my wife is an extrovert, 22 out of 10 on the extrovert scale so she struggles with me, and then the birth of a daughter and a son, both with cystic fibrosis.
I found the interesting thing to be that they have support groups for cystic fibrosis families. You talked about community; I never joined one. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being part of a community defined by illness. Now, lots of people do. I’m not saying they’re wrong; I’m just saying I couldn’t cope with that. So going to hospital, Chris would be around the whole ward. She knew everybody. She was friends with everybody. I just visited my daughter. I knew nobody and I didn’t want to know anybody. So yes when you talk about community, I’m an introvert, so I’m not a community builder in that sense. Chris is. You should have her here.”
