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A retired doctor from Sandspit has published a warts-and-all memoir from his life as a GP, obstetrician and medical educator, including three years spent with his young family in remote Nepal.
Greg Judkins says What Was I Thinking? is less conventional autobiography, more personal scrapbook of stories, reflections and memories from a life chock-full of challenge and adventure.
“It has some personal stories, but they’re largely medical, such as when I was harvesting eyeballs from newly dead patients in Whangarei, doing obstetrics in a mission hospital in Nepal or a house call in the middle of the night to what looked like a gang HQ,” he says.
From childhood impressions and memories through medical school and meeting wife Marion, to early practice and life in Nepal and India, before becoming a GP in South Auckland in the 1980s, What Was I
Thinking? pulls few punches, with frank, often funny and occasionally gruesome recollections.
Judkins retired to Sandspit in 2023, having had a holiday home there for 11 years, though his close connection with the area dates back to 1975, when he spent three months with Warkworth GPs Dr David Cross and Dr John Andrew during his final year at med school.
Unfortunately, his lasting memory of that time, and which he describes in the book, is of attending a serious car crash on Sandspit Road that resulted in the death of three people. He said not only was it a shocking experience, but “a humbling reminder of the limited usefulness of almost six years of medical education when it came to acute trauma”.
On a lighter note, he recalls local patients expressing their thanks for service in diverse ways, not least presenting him with two live crayfish in a bucket of water.
Judkins has been writing for many years as a hobby, and has already published two books – Biopsies, a book of short stories in 2020, and a collection of poetry, Shrapnel, in 2022.
In his role as a medical educator for the Royal New Zealand College of GPs, he has also encouraged members to read and write poetry in a bid to encourage empathy and reflection – there is even an annual college poetry competition named in his honour.
“Writing poems about encounters with patients is just a lovely way to reflect on what might be going on for the patient,” he says.
“I used to say to my registrars when they’d had a difficult consultation, ‘just imagine the patient going home and what they told their family about it – think about it from their point of view’.”
As well as regularly writing stories and poems, both Judkins and Marion have thrown themselves into community life since moving to Sandspit, getting involved with Hospice, U3A, Kowhai Singers and Warkworth Theatre.
“Warkworth is such a wonderful community for getting to know people, everyone is so friendly with some very well-educated people,” he says.
What Was I Thinking? is published by Copy Press and costs $35. It is available from Paper Plus Warkworth, Matakana Village Books or https://www.gregjudkins.com
Mahurangi Matters has a copy of What Was I Thinking? by Greg Judkins to give away. To enter the draw, simply email reporter@localmatters.co.nz with ‘Judkins book’ in the subject line, plus your name and phone number, by Wednesday, September 10.
