Kia Ora

Every time we stepped outside the front door to interact with the outer world it was like putting on a cloak or a hat. You adapted to the environment you walked into.

Luckily, we grew up the road from our grandparents and cousins.

I have a huge family. Four brothers and four sisters. My extended family covers a wide area geographically and colourful range of characters. I often joke that I’m related to half of my town (on the Maori side of the population) as both of my parents’ whakapapa (geneology) goes back centuries and both were from different local areas. I kid you not!

You had 3 ways to get out of town. Get a job in one of the big cities – usually lined up for you by a relative who you most likely would end up living with to get yourself on your feet, join the armed forces or go to university.

I happened to end up in the latter category almost by accident to most people’s amazement.

Education wasn’t prioritized in my household. It often came after other family centric activities or work.

To many I have fair skin and light-coloured eyes. So many can’t place my ethinicity in Australia, they can in my home town. I am Maori to my very core.

As a young Maori wahine (woman) growing up in small town NZ you were almost expected to end up working in a local business or a shearing shed.

Low expectations where rife and not a lot of encouragement given. At 15 years of age, I’d had a vague notion that I could be a doctor (as I really liked biology and was pretty good at it). After asking the careers counsellor and the chemistry teacher what they thought my chances were of achieving this to which they both separately replied, “Maria, I think it best that you aim for something more realistic like being a nurse”.

No disrespect to nurses – my beloved older sister was a nurse – I thought to myself “Bugger that!”.

I had a very balanced view of the world and not one chip on my shoulder but two. One on either side! It kind of put me off going to university.

With my mother’s nurturing encouragement, I stayed at school. I was ready to leave in year 11 and venture overseas working in a shearing shed (even though I hated working in one).

Managed to muddle my way through it all completing high school and was dead set against going to university.

In the meantime, my dad would go out to the country and fish and dive from traditional lands he grew up on in an area north of Turanganui-A-Kiwa / Gisborne.

He would take the boys with him and eventually he succumbed to my nagging and would take me as well. I loved the land, the sea and hanging out with my dad.

The summer after finishing high school was one full of spending time at the marae during the week with the Aunties at Te Poho O Rawiri. And the weekends up the coast fishing, eeling and diving with my dad on Pakarae Station*.

One weekend whilst up there my dad and Uncle where smoking fish / eels and a new 4WD pulls up at the quarters we were staying in. A Maori couple get out and introduce themselves, both are prominent professionals based in Wellington, NZ. They were camping locally for a couple of weeks to get away from it all.

The wife took a shine to me and after finding out I’d done well in my year 12 exams decided that I was going to university. She asked me what my plans where and what I’d like to do, so I told her how I loved the sea and was fascinated by kina (sea urchin) and crayfish. How at Otago University there was a marine biology study looking at cultivating sea crayfish by rotating their feeding. Long story short if I had to go to university, it would be to study marine biology with a bachelor’s in economics. First, I was going to travel.

I had missed the cut off date to apply to go to university and to apply for accommodation, she steamrolled the whole process by not only getting my university application agreed to as well as a place in a hall of residence, so I had somewhere to live. You do not stand a chance against a wahine (woman) like her. You simply go with the flow.

So, it was off to university I went.

Life had its challenges. I thrived in my first semester at university, and I had enrolled in general science year. The load was quite large. At the time you could also apply to get into medical school (Otago Medical School) by doing a “medical intermediate year”. This was where the best of that year at university were competing for a set number of places to get into medical school. With persuasion I changed to do this and became what was known as a “minty” and had to go to the medical school to talk with a doctor involved with the program. A certain number of places were reserved for Maori. During this conversation he told me my chances of getting in this way were good. That I’d amount to no more than a B – B+ average student even though I was averaging A – A+ in my courses.

So, I changed my course title over and took his chat and parked it to the side.

Can you see a theme?

By the end of my 1^st term, it was time to go home for the holidays. Unbeknown to me my mother had been to see our family GP to investigate her tiredness. She had developed iron deficiency and after being investigated was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

I got off the plane and barely got to see her before she was operated on. We nearly lost her the following week. We were told she had 6 months to live and that was close to the mark. She died at the age of 48, 4 days prior to her birthday.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

The rest of that year was a blur of trying to hold it together. Get through the term to rush home to look after her and spend time with her.

We were blessed to have time.

My acceptance letter to medical school came after she had died and was there when we took her home for the night.

We have a tradition of holding on to our loved ones for 3 days after they pass away. It is a time to cry, laugh, curse, love and share stories. The good the bad and the whatever needs to come out then this is the time to do it.

Being at medical school gave me something to fall into. It was structured.

The next several years were extremely tough personally.

Hard work led to me getting through medical school.

Ultimately, I decided to come to Australia to work after graduating as it seemed like a great opportunity at the time.

So I put my ring into the hat and applied to work at a hospital in Sydney. To my amazement I got a job. After spending Christmas with my family, it was off to Australia.

Big hospital medicine was an adjustment and a smooth transition as I had spent the final year of medical school shadowing the junior doctors and learning “on the job”. 

During my medical training I’d worked under a general surgeon with an impeccable record with virtually no post-operative wound infections. A part of his secret was to ensure for those 60 yoa and older to be prescribe low dose Zinc and Vit C 2 weeks pre and post operatively. I asked him how come he’d recommended this? His reply was that people over the age of 60 where more likely to have a nutrient deficiency and at a higher risk of poor wound healing He then asked what cross-linked collagen? The answer was Zinc and Vit C. This set a precedent in my thinking.

During our 1^st year the pressure was immense to go into a specialty and I really enjoyed surgery. I also wondered how people got to end up with an illness. What happened in their life to end up with the diagnosis they had?

This also happened at the time I was working a surgical rotation and was seeing a number of post op wound infections.

I made the decision to learn how to help people to prevent this from happening. To try and understand how we become unwell and find a way to work assist others with recovering / regaining health.

This lead to an ongoing quest to recognize and understand the fundamentals of assisting with regaining health and wellness.

*Pakarae Station is a land corporation formed in the early 20 the century after legislation was passed by Sir Apirana Ngata to incorporate tribal land. To be a shareholder you must come from that tribe, it is based purely on whakapapa (genealogy). He had the vision to do this and stop Maori lands from being whittled away into smaller land blocks or being confiscated.

This Station is the backdrop of hills seen north of the beach scenes from the movie “The Whale Rider”.