Public Address - Southerly (Home)

Dear Dr Bollard | May 13, 2009 22:56

In this week's column, the Governor of the Reserve Bank uses his medical expertise to help people with health problems.

Dear Dr Bollard,

Sometimes I have difficulty breathing, particularly after I've exercised. Is it possible that I'm developing asthma?

Yours sincerely,
Theodore
(Ashburton)

The good news is that you definitely don't have asthma, Theodore. The bad news, however, is that you do have a serious blockage in your windpipe -- and you're going to have to give yourself an emergency tracheotomy.

Here are the tools that you'll need:

1. A sharp kitchen knife.
   
2. Some spare tubing (for example: a length of old garden hose, or the neck of a broken bottle).
   
3. A strong disinfectant such as petrol.
   

The most difficult item to obtain will probably be the petrol. Since this is an emergency situation, it is perfectly permissible to siphon fuel from your neighbours' car. Of course, you don't have time to borrow the keys, so just hack into the side of the car (next to the petrol tank) with an angle grinder or an oxy-acetylene torch.

Drain four or five litres of petrol, and use it to wash your kitchen knife. You want that knife good and clean, so give it a thorough rinse.

Now -- with as much force as possible -- plunge the knife into the side of your neck in the location of your windpipe. The knife should leave a large gaping wound with little or no blood. If blood is fountaining from the hole, then you've probably hit a carotid artery or one of your jugular veins, and you'll need to stab yourself in the throat again in a different location.

Take the end of your garden hose or broken bottle, rinse it in the petrol, and force it between the wound 'flaps' that you've made with the knife. You'll have to push really hard to open up the incision. If your tracheotomy 'tube' still won't go into the hole, then take a heavy object -- such as a brick -- and use it to hammer the tube all the way into the wound.

Once you've finished, take a moment to pat yourself on the back. Well done, you've saved the most important thing that you own -- your life! Some people find a tracheotomy tube to be disfiguring, but why not make a feature of it? Try draping a piece of ribbon around the tubing. How about a balloon on a string? Learn to live a little! Don't be such a whiney bitch your whole life.

Dear Dr Bollard,

I've recently re-paved my drive -- and, after lifting a heavy wheelbarrow of concrete, felt a sudden sharp pain. Have I given myself a hernia?

Yours sincerely,
Gwen
(Titirangi)

Oh, Gwen, Gwen... it must be wonderful to live in your little fantasy world. Of course it's not a hernia. It's angina, and you're going to die -- unless you perform surgery upon yourself immediately.

Now about half the patients I diagnose with angina will tell me: "Of course I've got angina -- I'm a lady." Well, I'm not talking about that sort of angina, Gwen. I'm talking about the other sort; the type that kills you. Here are the tools that you'll need for your operation:

1. A bottle brush.
   
2. A clean rolling-pin.
   
3. Some fine piano wire.
   
4. An ordinary circular saw with a 250 mm blade.
   

If you're not musical yourself, then you'll have to take some wire from your neighbours' piano. There's no time for social niceties such as ringing the doorbell, so take an axe, and hack through the wall of your neighbours' house. Chop open the piano and remove a length of the thinnest wire that you find inside.

Lie down on your neighbours' kitchen table (there's no point in getting your own table messed up with blood), and start the circular saw. Cut cleanly through your breastbone, then -- thrusting both hands inside the incision -- 'crack open' your chest cavity. Wedge the rolling-pin into the wound to stop it from closing.

Using the circular saw, deftly trim off the various veins and arteries that connect to your heart. In all probability, Gwen, your angina will be caused by atherosclerosis, so take the bottle brush and give everything a really good scrubbing
-- making sure to remove all the atheromatous plaque. Work quickly, because with your heart disconnected there'll be no blood supply to your brain, and you could lose consciousness.

Use neat stitches of piano wire to reconnect your heart, and use any leftover wire to sew up the incision in your chest. Phew -- you're done! Give yourself the rest of the morning off, and don't barrow more than five tonnes of concrete (in total) for the rest of the day.

For the next few years, you should eat mainly a lard-based diet, in order to 'plug' any gaps that you may have left when sewing up your blood vessels.

Dear Dr Bollard,

I'm not normally a drinker, but last night I went to a party and foolishly allowed myself to be talked into having a glass of shandy. This morning I awoke feeling terrible: my head was pounding and my hands were shaking. What should I do?

Yours sincerely,
Paul
(Parnell)

I'm afraid this is a textbook case of alcohol abuse, Paul. Your hands are shaking because you've permanently damaged the motor-control regions of your brain. Happily, the good news is that if you act now -- right now -- you can stop the damage from spreading. Here's what you'll need to do the job:

1. An ordinary drill-press big enough to take your head.
   
2. A 13 mm drill bit (Important: do not, under any circumstances, attempt to substitute an imperial 1/2" bit).
   
3. A bicycle pump.
   
4. A dewar of liquid nitrogen.
   

The liquid nitrogen will obviously be the most difficult item to obtain, and I suggest that your best bet will be your local hospital. Because this is an emergency situation, you won't have time to get your own car out of the garage -- so hot-wire your neighbours' car.

Drive to the hospital and smash the car through the front of the building. Make your way to the section containing the medical laboratories. If the corridors seem too narrow, then 'flick' the car sideways onto two wheels so that it can be driven more safely. Remember that you're in a hurry, so keep up a brisk pace -- don't go any slower than, say, 170 kilometres per hour. Keep an eye out for anything that looks icy.

Once you've located the liquid nitrogen, plug in your drill press, place your head on the clamping table, reach backwards over your shoulder to operate the drop-arm, and plunge the 13 mm drill bit into your skull -- it doesn't matter where, any random area will do. Caution: you should stop driving and get out of the car before attempting this step.

Now look at your hands -- are they still shaking? If they haven't stopped shaking, then repeatedly drill through your skull at different locations until you notice a change. As soon as you do, then you've located the alcohol-damaged part of your brain! Use the bicycle pump to suck a measure of liquid nitrogen from the dewar, and squirt it down the hole to 'cauterize' the damaged neurons.

You're done! But you'll need to be extra-cautious when driving home because drilling into your brain may cause side-effects -- such as loss of vision or your sense of uninhibitedness.

As a final point, Paul, I should perhaps mention that some of the steps in this medical procedure weren't strictly necessary -- but you needed to be taught a hard lesson to stop abusing shandy.

Disclaimer:
Dr Bollard is a proper doctor and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand advises that you should immediately act upon his advice -- without seeking any further medical opinions.

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At the RWMC with Alan Bollard | May 06, 2009 23:24

So anyway, I'm at the Richmond Working Men's Club with Alan Bollard, and there's this bloke staring at us.

Eventually he comes over and points a finger at Bollard, and he's all: "I know you, mate. I've seen your fucking face before."

The bloke's got an Aussie accent, and I can tell Bollard's just about to smack him one for that reason alone -- never mind the business with the finger-pointing -- when suddenly the bloke goes: "Got it! Alan Bollard, Western Australia, 1974. Port Hedland bare-knuckle fist-fighting championship. You won."

Bollard puts down his pint, and he's like: "So fucking what?" But he pronounces it like this: "So. Fucking. What." And he gives the Aussie this extreme psycho-killer stare. Of course the conversation dies a bit of a natural death after that, and the bloke goes off to the lounge bar to finish his drink.

So Bollard and me have another couple of pints. After a while I get to thinking about what the Aussie says, and then I'm like: "Didn't know you've been to Western Australia."

And Bollard goes: "Yeah?"

And then he's like: "It was after my Master's at Auckland Uni. S'pose I was trying to find myself or something."

Now Bollard's having another swig of beer: "It's kind of a funny story, actually. The Port Hedland championship's the biggest prize-money I ever win for bare-knuckle fist-fighting."

"They pay me in fifty dollar bills. When I get back to my hostel, I spread it out on the bed, and count 500 notes. So I go straight down to the Marrapikurrinya pub, and shout the whole bar a beer.

"It's a real hot night, even for the north of Western Australia, and I get talking to this girl with some sort of hyphenated name, like Mary-Joe or Peggy-Beth. I forget as soon as she tells me. But, you know how it is, I feel embarrassed to ask again later. So I just have to keep talking to her without using her name.

"And anyway she seems to like me, and after a bit I go: 'If you can have anything you want right now, what will it be?'

"And she says she wants to see snow.

"So I'm 23 years old, and I want to impress her, and I'm like: 'Righto then, we're off.'

"The barman's been listening to our conversation, and he's all: 'It's a long way from here to the snow, mate, hope you got a full tank.' And he starts laughing at me, which really fucks me off. But then I start laughing too -- you know, so that I don't look like a dick -- and so does Mary-Beth (or whatever her name is), all the way to the ute, where she goes: 'Are you really taking me to see snow?'

"And I'm like: 'Gotta get some supplies first.'

"So we drive to this 24-hour petrol station and I buy some booze. Then Peggy-Joe (or whatever her name is) says we should go round to a friend of a friend of hers. We spend about twenty minutes knocking on the door, and in the end they wake up and sell us a big bag of dope -- which puts a bit of a hole in my winnings, but I try not to think about that.

"And then we get back in the Holden and she rolls a joint, and I open a bottle of vodka, and a couple of cans of beer -- and we're totally out of there, mate. It's about seven in the morning by this stage, and people are getting up, and people are going to work. But we're heading south-east; we're going to the snow.

"And we drink and drive, and drive and smoke, and a bit later we stop and fuck -- which is pretty good, in my opinion. And then we smoke and drive some more. And I think at one stage I start to get a bit out of it, 'cause it all kind of merges into one -- one big blur of desert and cars and motels, and drinking and driving and smoking and fucking.

"And a bit later, a day or so later, or maybe it's as much as a week, Peggy-Beth or Mary-Joe (or whatever her name is) starts to piss me off. Drinking my booze and smoking my dope, as I see it. And then there's the whole name thing. I mean you can't go through life with a woman, and you don't even know her name -- but it seems too ridiculous to ask at this late stage.

"And I'm getting on her nerves, too. Or, at least, this is my impression from the way she keeps nagging me about getting to the snow, and how we're running low on dope. And then there are more 24-hour petrol stations, and more hard liquor and beer, and drinking and driving, and desert and motels, but not so much fucking now. And it all starts to put a big hole in my winnings, but I am beyond worrying about that anymore. And we're getting south, and it's cold at night.

"And then I really start to get out of it. The big blur gets even bigger -- like I'm travelling underneath the ute, with my face nearly touching the road, down the highway at about 190 kilometres an hour. And it's all night: one huge blur of blackness, without road or desert or anything. And in the middle of the darkness, I'm wondering: what's gonna run out first, the booze or the dope or Mary-Beth (or whatever her name is) or maybe me?

"But in the end, it seems they all run out at the same time. And I'm sick, really sick, hallucinating sick -- sick for what seems like days, heaving and retching and trembling, and coughing up stuff like cotton wool, all white and fluffy, like little bits of cloud. And I'm never this crook before, mate, no fucking way. And I'm yellow; I'm the colour of butter. Even my eyeballs are yellow. Even some of my clothes have turned yellow. Alone in this motel room, with nothing but empty beer bottles, and the smell of chunder, and a few left-over coins.

"Eventually I feel better, and I get up and go outside -- and in the distance I see these really huge fucking mountains with snow on them. Just like you see on telly. All big and white and beautiful, so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes -- or maybe it's the cold that does that -- and I think: "Fuck. So we do get to the snow after all."

"And I go back inside, and clean up a bit, and have a shower, and then I look for the motel manager. I get my map of Australia, the big one, the really big one, and I say to the manager: 'I'm a bit lost, mate , can you point to where we are on the map?' And I gesticulate in kind of a general way, so he won't know quite how lost I really am.

"And the motel bloke looks at me, and he's like: "Are you taking the piss, mate? This is a map of Australia ."

"Anyway, that's how I end up in Christchurch. After that I go back to Auckland Uni -- do my Ph.D. in economics. You know the rest."

So here we are -- Bollard and me -- sitting in the RWMC finishing our beers. And eventually I go: "Yeah, I knew it must've been something like that."

And then Bollard's like: "Hey, you know that Aussie bloke from just before? Did he remind you of Ken Done?"

I think about it for a moment, and I'm like: "Yeah, I s'pose."

And Bollard's like: "Well then, I think I'll have to go and kick his fucking head in."

Note:
David Haywood is a friend and spiritual advisor to Alan Bollard. He is willing to sell the exclusive rights to this true story to New Idea, Investigate Magazine, or as an opinion piece for The Sunday-Star Times.

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