An extraordinary, ordinary doc
Clive Cameron’s face was the first thing a school’s worth of children ever saw.
He pumped out chest compressions for stalled hearts. He worried over patients’ mystery symptoms for a nameless disease, later called Aids. When people from Waikanae had terminal illnesses, he helped them make sense of their dying.
On Monday, Clive Cameron woke up, finally, with nothing more pressing to do than go for a walk.
Smalltown New Zealand has lost another fulltime general practice doctor, from the generation who did everything, as Cameron retires after 35 years in the Kapiti Coast town, situated north of Wellington.
Cameron is slightly built and quietly spoken: during this interview, his manner is so calming, it screams for a patient. He is the strongest gentle man you could meet.
His transition from fulltime doctor at the Waikanae Health Centre to retiree, including finding his replacement, was several years in the planning. Some patients had been with him since 1981.
For the first 15 or so years of his GP life, his duties included lowrisk deliveries at the maternity unit in Paraparaumu.
There’s modesty, then there’s Dr Cameron. How many Kapiti Coast babies did he help deliver over the years?
‘‘The most I delivered in a year was about 35, so not a lot ... not a huge number: Perhaps two or three hundred.’’
Also, when he started, the nearest ambulance was about 40 kilometres away in Porirua, so four doctors were on call for Kapiti emergencies. ‘‘A weekend was a pretty big mental hurdle to get through, in a way, knowing you were on at night.’’
In an emergency, he would get a call from the ambulance, or the patient, or their partner if they had collapsed, then race out to help.
He still thinks about the ‘‘horrific night’’ he stabilised a heartattack patient, then was called to another patient who had collapsed and was unconscious.
‘‘In the end, they both died. The one I went to couldn’t be resuscitated and I came back to the other one, who had deteriorated and died.’’
The bit that might most affect you was seeing the spouse, the family, ‘‘the distress of people like that is still tough’’.
Cameron upskilled in the care of people who were terminally ill, then worked with Mary Potter Hospice in Wellington.
The hospice was fantastic, he says. He recalls a young dying man who loved mountains, and who looked out his window and found the garden outside had turned into an icy, snowy mountain scene thanks to a nurse.
Hospice staff help people come to terms with dying, help them put things right in their lives, Cameron says.
Alison Cameron married Clive three months before he started in Waikanae; they’ve raised six sons there, and they love the town.
Her husband is a strong person, she says. In a job that left some burned out, he had ‘‘inner-grit’’.
Clive Cameron has retained his faith in people after so many years of dealing with their most intensely personal moments.
‘‘Some people have terrible luck, and some people act in antisocial ways. I think, basically, people are good.’’