thrupp@waikato.ac.nz
Did you have a good summer? I hope so. Mine was both horrendous and wonderful at the same time. I had a cancer diagnosis and surgery but also then a very fortunate outcome. The problem started when a blister on my heel refused to mend, and over 2021 I had various diagnoses, and treatments such as liquid nitrogen. My GP, who provides skin clinic services, eventually said that he could cut the blister out but being on my heel I’d be unable to walk on it for a while. Never any talk of cancer because it didn’t present as a melanoma. By December I resigned myself to having the procedure and made an appointment for January. But when I got back to Hamilton after a month-long holiday in the South Island, my GP took another look at my heel and suggested I see a plastics specialist. At my first appointment the specialist was concerned it had not healed after so long and told me: ‘We are going to get to the bottom of this!’ She took some small punch samples and sent them off to the lab. Meanwhile my life was going rather well. I had nearly completed a large edited book on Finnish education after three years work, and I got the news that I was to be awarded with an honorary doctorate from the University of Turku in Finland, a great honour. There was also still time for snoozing in a hammock under trees in the hot Waikato summer. Everything changed on February 3. In the morning I had the satisfaction of sending the book manuscript to the publisher, in the afternoon I got the diagnosis that my heel problem was in fact a malignant melanoma. In no time I went from someone with a blister on my heel to a priority patient facing a cancer that could prove fatal. After that, things happened rather quickly, although it didn’t always seem so at the time. I had a hospital consult and a CT PET body scan. Then a six hour surgery at Waikato Hospital during which surgeons removed my heel with the melanoma and used a still attached flap of my instep to create a new heel. They then filled the instep with BTM, a strong artificial substance, which they will eventually cover with skin taken from my thigh. A really impressive reconstruction. As I recover at home weeks later, I know it’s been a significant setback but I also consider myself very fortunate as the scan and biopsies have indicated the cancer never spread beyond the tumour removed with my heel. Whakawhiti te rā! A big relief. Actually the whole experience feels like one of those bad jokes that go to polar opposites, let’s see: Unfortunately I got cancer. Fortunately it could be cut out. Unfortunately it was in my heel where cutting it out involved a major procedure. Fortunately I live near a hospital in a country with super-skilled surgeons and
specialist nursing staff. Unfortunately it was in the middle of a Covid surge. Fortunately the urgency of my condition meant the surgery was not delayed. Unfortunately the only scanning machine in our region was broken for a week causing a delay. Fortunately when the results came back they were favourable. And so on. Here's a few things I have learnt from the experience. First, that skin melanomas are helluva things. You can even get one if you are not a sun-loving, beach-goer type and on parts of your body that rarely see the sun. They can be cut out if detected early, if too late the cancer spreads and not much can be done, hence they are so dangerous. New Zealand apparently has the highest rates of melanoma skin cancer on the globe. Are you and your whānau and school taking the risks seriously enough?
Te Kete Hono proudly offers its learning management system, SchoolTalk to the school sector to codify the teaching practices that cannot be left to chance:
• Assessment for Learning • Learner Agency • Design for learning • Digital Literacy • Home/School Partnerships Under hybrid learning conditions, SchoolTalk enables these practices to be sustained, and students’ learning progressed. Contact Te Kete Hono NOW to begin using SchoolTalk to support hybrid learning at your School.
www.tkh.nz/home
admin@tkh.nz
Related to this, I now realise it simply doesn’t pay to put off difference, but the success of any particular practice or event health issues until after: the end of term/a holiday/the house often comes down to good luck as well. It just happens that a renovations/a family wedding or other event (tick whichever newcomer to our district wants a job locally and has the teaching applies). In my case I didn’t have my blister cut out earlier because attributes we are looking for. There’s that parent who puts up their it would have upset plans to do the Milford Track. It was indeed hand at a meeting and asks just the right question. The weather a ‘Great Walk’, and I did well to reserve my wife and I a place on forecast for camp isn’t great but actually the day dawns clear and the DOC booking system. But it certainly fine. For those that are religious, these are wasn’t worth delaying a health problem Our good fortune blessings as well as luck. that turned out to be so serious. Our good fortune should bring a Another thing about experiencing a should bring a measure measure of humility, but we should health crisis is how it brings out love also celebrate it. For as long as I can and support from family, friends and of humility, but we remember, my mother has been fond colleagues. Gratitude doesn’t cover it. But should also celebrate of saying about some person she is I was further struck by how interactions discussing: ‘Honestly, if they fell in the with everybody you are in contact with it. water, they’d come up with pockets full become more poignant when life hangs of fish!’ It’s an expression of delight, in the balance. You get a really heightened awareness of how amazement and relief that people can escape impending disaster wonderful most people are, even as they go about their day to and that a situation has turned out well. It has probably never day lives. been a common saying in Aotearoa although I once found it in I want to mention my week in hospital following surgery. I have an old copy of the Southland Times (29 April 1884, p.3). never had to stay in hospital before, and it was both remarkable What I would say then about luck (and note the new title of and truly humbling to be in the tender care of all those people my column!), is that I hope that as a principal you fall on your working together, doing different roles skilfully, taking over feet more often than not. That on top of your hard work, luck or each other’s shifts and so on. I think in some ways health and blessings are mostly on your side. And I also hope that in a way, education share the same caring-profession qualities. It has to be you come to expect this, even if you don’t take it for granted. a team effort and when the team is working well, it’s a wonder to Because even in our very troubled world, there is still a great behold. Especially if you are vulnerable and on the receiving end. deal of good luck about. As you can see from this column, I’m My experience has made me think about luck, including the considering myself lucky just lately, and I’m delighted to be able place it has in education leadership. We can plan well, we can to tell the tale. become very skilled and knowledgeable and that all makes a huge