Going out on a limb
Kiwi amputees want to give their body parts a fitting farewell. Craig Hoyle reports.
Tawera Nikau was determined not to lose his right leg a second time. The former professional league player accepted it had to be amputated following his motorcycle crash in 2003, but when a doctor asked him to sign a consent form for disposal it was a bridge too far.
‘‘He said ‘we’re going to dispose of it’,’’ Nikau says, as he recounts how the doctor gestured out the window to an incinerator when asked about the leg’s final destination.
‘‘I said ‘nah nah doc, I’m gonna take it home with me’. And he said ‘no-one’s ever asked for that’, and I said ‘haven’t you heard of cultural sensitivity’?’’
Nikau is one of a large number of Kiwi amputees; more than 1000 surgeries are performed in New Zealand each year, according to figures provided by district health boards.
Around one in 10 amputees now request their chopped body part be returned to them after surgery, as Nikau did back in 2003, although a number later change their minds.
But dozens of body parts sit languishing in district health board refrigerators awaiting collection, including 24 legs and five toes.
Auckland DHB, MidCentral DHB and Taranaki DHB each said they had four legs in cold storage; one of the legs at MidCentral has waited seven years for its owner to return.
Around half of the amputations are due to diabetes and vascular complications, while others are due to accidents or congenital conditions.
Male amputees outnumber women by three to one: Research from the United States shows men are nine times more likely to need amputations following injury, due to vocational hazards and recreational risktaking. Men are also more than twice as likely to undergo amputations due to disease.
Amputation health statistics are ‘‘horrifyingly poor’’ for men in general, and for Maori men in particular, says NZ Artificial Limb Service peer support volunteer Ken Te Tau.
Te Tau explains many Maori amputees believe body parts maintain their tapu, or sacredness, even after they’ve been removed.
‘‘Maori culture does influence the choice of most Maori amputees to request the return of their limbs, and this cultural practice now filters into the Kiwi psyche,’’ he says.
Most DHBs store amputated limbs for several months before pressing patients to collect them from the hospital. If there’s been no reply after several phone calls and letters, stray body parts are incinerated or passed on to local iwi for culturally appropriate disposal.
Some patients feel the process moves too quickly, and say they were rushed into making a decision before they were ready.
Gordon Toi, Nikau’s friend and fellow amputee, was keen to give his left leg a proper farewell when it was amputated after a motorcycle accident last year.
‘‘My initial idea was to take it out to sea and have a special ceremony, just a little karakia, a little prayer,’’ he says.
‘‘I would have wrapped it in such a way that it sunk to the bottom, and if it became food for some lucky fish, then good.’’
The tattoo artist was still in hospital in Auckland when Waikato DHB began pressing him to collect his amputated leg, but ‘‘we just didn’t have anywhere to put the bloody thing’’.
Doctors were also concerned that his amputated leg could pose a health risk, as it had become badly infected before it was removed.
Toi and his wife reluctantly agreed it could be disposed of; he still regrets missing out on a farewell karakia.
Nikau had better luck removing his leg from the hospital, but like Toi, he pondered over what to do next.
‘‘When I got home I put it in the freezer, and it was there for a little while because I didn’t know what I was going to do with it,’’ he says.
The leg was eventually buried with Nikau’s nephew at the family’s urupa (Maori burial site). ‘‘It’s been interred into the ground, and I’ll eventually also lie where my leg is now,’’ Nikau says.
‘‘Being Maori, there’s a real spiritual and cultural significance around body parts. It was a part of me, and I didn’t want it put in an incinerator and burnt up.’’
Amputees are now routinely offered the option of keeping their amputated limbs, a practice that was considered unthinkable in the past. Bruce Hitchings had his leg removed in Wellington as a teenager in 1967 because a cancerous growth was spreading toward the rest of his body. ‘‘It got into the knee and was moving up, so it was either take it off or die,’’ says the 67-year-old Invercargill retiree. ‘‘It was a pretty easy choice.’’ Hitchings says in those days there was no discussion about what happened to the limb, ‘‘and I had absolutely no interest in keeping it’’. Nearly four decades later, Nelson amputee Shane Torrance got his leg back in 2005 only because he had been working as a painter at the hospital and knew the orderly in the surgical ward. ‘‘He asked me if I wanted to keep it, and I said ‘well, I hadn’t even thought about it, so yeah, chuck it in the freezer’,’’ Torrance says.
Policies had changed by 2014 when Matthew Haydon had his left leg amputated due to a spinal condition.
‘‘They definitely offered it back, but I wasn’t one of those people who wanted to keep it,’’ he says.
The 28-year-old Sky TV technician says medical experts wanted to run tests on his leg after it was removed, and he was glad to see the back of a body part that had caused him endless problems.
Torrance likewise has no regrets in having his legs amputated – both of them, the right leg in 2005, and the left two years later – as type one diabetes left them severely ulcerated and ‘‘very painful’’.
His left leg was removed in three separate surgeries, and he wasn’t able to keep the pieces. However, he still has what’s left of his right leg.
It spent several years in the freezer, before being buried in the garden of his Nelson home for 18 months so the flesh would rot away.
Now, the bones – along with a bit of remnant gristle – sit in a box in a drawer in his lounge, surrounded by books and photographs.
Among other possibilities, the 54-yearold kitchen hand has considered turning his human remains into a bong.
‘‘I would sit the bowl on top of the foot, and stick a pipe down the inside of the shin bone,’’ he says.
Torrance has already trimmed the bone’s jagged edge and fashioned it into a skull necklace, but can’t persuade anyone to carve and mould what’s left of his foot and leg.
‘‘I’ve spoken to a couple of bone
Maori culture does influence the choice of most Maori amputees to request the return of their limbs, and this cultural practice now filters into the Kiwi psyche. Peer support volunteer Ken Te Tau
carvers at the gypsy fairs, and nobody wants to carve or even touch the bone,’’ he says. ‘‘I don’t know what the problem is really.’’
Torrance’s case sparked international attention after he tried to sell his right leg on Trade Me in 2006.
The attempted sale was short-lived, being pulled by the site within a few hours, but prompted a warning from police that it was illegal to sell human body parts.
Torrance believes amputees should be given extra time to make up their minds. ‘‘A lot of people don’t have the question put to them until they’re just about to have surgery,’’ he says. ‘‘They should be able to keep them until after they’ve made a decision.’’
Shock factor aside, Torrance says holding on to his leg was about much more than just having a laugh.
‘‘I’ve freaked a few people out,’’ he says, ‘‘but it’s a part of who I am, and it’s important to keep that part of me.’’
He’s changed his mind about selling it off, which he says was an early attempt to raise money for his daughter’s university tuition.
Now, he’d like to hear from anyone who would consider carving it up.