I was working in intensive care recovery.
To start with, I couldn't speak a word of Norwegian, but they didn't care, they were so short-staffed.
We spent Christmas there. It was absolutely freezing, but the local people were very welcoming and included us in their Christmas festivities.
We learned Norwegian on the job. Most of the staff spoke English, so we got by.
We had to write up our nursing reports in Norwegian.
The sister-in-charge helped us as she had worked in America for many years.
It's funny to think about it now but back then the town was dry.
People brewed their own alcohol or caught a fast ferry across the sound to buy some.
In 1979 I was on my way back to New Zealand when I met Chris, the man who was to become my husband.
He was a Gisborne boy. I got a job on the medical ward at Cook Hospital and never left.
Until then, I'd only done surgical nursing, but I found medical nursing much more interesting.
Nineteen years ago I joined the renal service, managing people with kidney disease on peritoneal dialysis.
Dialysis does the work of your kidneys when you have kidney failure.
It filters wastes and removes extra fluid. And it restores the right balance of chemicals in the blood.
Peritoneal dialysis uses the lining of your belly to filter your blood.
This lining is called the peritoneal membrane.
Before I started in the role people's dialysis had to be managed from Hamilton, and so this was a challenge for people from here.
Some would move their family to Hamilton.
The service is still run out of Waikato Hospital. People from the East Coast go there for initiating dialysis and training, and then they can come home.
Once they have completed their training for peritoneal dialysis at Waikato, many of the patients do their dialysis while they are asleep on an overnight cycler machine. But some choose to remain on manual peritoneal dialysis.
My job is to support those people and continue their dialysis training back here in their own home.
Medical nursing is interesting as we seek to understand diseases and how to manage them.
Many of our renal patients have co-morbidities.
For example, 60 to 70 percent of our renal patients also have diabetes.
Most people don't recover from kidney disease, so dialysis is a long-term treatment.
Coming to terms with a long-term treatment like dialysis is difficult, especially for younger people.
Many hope for a kidney transplant, but there are just not that many available.
The challenge is finding a good match from a limited supply of donors. And so for that reason alone, I would like to see more people donating organs.
My work is holistic. I'm always working with other clinical teams to get the best outcome for the people under my care.
These teams will often include social workers and counsellors.
I can help them with the whole-of-care management.
Knowledge around a patient's social wellbeing can mean a lot to how successful their treatment is.
The highlight of my PD nursing is the relationships I've had with the people I've looked after. You become close to them and become part of their whanau.
You want the best outcome for them, and you do everything you can to get that.
There may come a time when dialysis no longer works.
It's challenging and a struggle as you help someone make the best decision about the next step. We do have to have difficult conversations at times.
What keeps me passionate about this job is seeing people respond to the support I can give them.
