Doctor on the wild side

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KNYSNA NEWS - Doctors are not always clad in the same pastel-coloured scrubs we've become so used to over the years. Instead, some don all sorts of gear most of us wouldn't even dream of. Co-founder of the Knysna/Sedgefield Hospice, Joan Louwrens, is one of those doctors.

Joan's second book, a memoir titled A Wilder Life: Journey of an Adventuring Doctor, is due to be released by Jonathan Ball Publishers this week – 12 years after she self-published her first book Making Tracks... A Moving Memoir.

As the title of her new book suggests, it details the various adventures she has embarked on throughout her life as a medical doctor.

Talking to the author at her home overlooking the winding Knysna River, Joan relates just some of the adventures that made for her colourful, well-travelled life. Born in South Africa, Joan spent her formative years in the old Rhodesia, and from an early age fostered a love for medicine and adventure – a trait that would greatly assist her later on in life.

After school in Harare, she made her way to the Western Province (now Western Cape) in 1970 to study chemical engineering at the University of Cape Town.

She graduated from UCT with her medical degree in 1975, marking the start of a long, illustrious and adventure-filled career that has seen her traverse all seven continents.

Joan Louwrens is aboard her boat offloading onto an ice shelf in the Antarctic.

After her housemanship in Windhoek in 1976 , Joan moved to North America with her husband Pete so he could further his studies. In late 1979 they moved to Swaziland, where they lived for four years before moving back to Cape Town in 1984.

They had not been back for long when her husband passed away. With two daughters, four-and-a-half and five-months-old respectively, Joan moved to Knysna in late '84.

The subsequent seven years in Knysna, spent on a farm overlooking the Knysna River, were healing for Joan as she came to found the Knysna/Sedgefield Hospice, work in the outpatients and casualty departments at Knysna Provincial Hospital and venture into palliative care.

She returned to Cape Town in 1991, which would be her "home base" for the next 15 years while she would bounce around from island to island, place to place, leaving her mark as a healer of bodies and souls wherever she could.

Her first stint came towards the end of 1991, when she was stationed on Tristan da Cunha for a period of six months – a dream come true. "I had learnt of the island 30 years prior while watching TV as a 10-year-old girl, and I said then that I just had to visit the island some day," she reminisces smilingly.

The trip across was both daunting and filled with irony. "I get horribly seasick. Something that's not all too great when you travel thousands of kilometres to islands by boat, especially when you're the doctor of the people on said boat," Joan quips.

The next big adventures came in 1993 and 1995 on the South Atlantic island of St Helena. One of three resident doctors amongst only 4 500 people, her stints yielded little in the way of "hairy" medicinal ventures.

It did however awaken a need to study further in the field of anaesthetics. Following her second spell in St Helena, Joan's adventures became erratic at best, and she would go on to visit some of the most far-flung reaches of the world. The Australian Outback, the Falklands, Elephant Island, Prince Edward, Ascension – all places that Joan would pass through and leave her mark as doctor.

In 2006 she returned to her home in Knysna – which has been her home base since – but not before first cycling from Cairo to Cape Town.

Joan Louwrens on the verandah of her home overlooking the Knysna River.
Photo: Blake Linder

Joan's first book was published in 2007, followed by working forays to the Arctic and Antarctic and graduating in tropical medicine, before tackling what she feels has been her toughest challenge as a doctor yet – the Kruger National Park. "Even though it was nowhere near as far away, my stint in the KNP was difficult.

"It is daunting to say the least, because if a ranger dials you up in the middle of the night from the other side of the Kruger, you can't just rush over. You have to treat him remotely, as best you can," she said.

Photo gallery: Joan Louwrens, well travelled doctor

Joan would also be called out early in the mornings when rangers have just dealt with poachers.

"When a poacher is wounded and you treat him, you feel like the bad guy in the equation. You feel every ranger staring at you wondering why you are treating this poacher. But, as a doctor it's your oath. You have to. No matter who or what. All of these things made that my toughest stint as a medical professional."

That same year Joan was inspired to pen her second memoir. "I had been asked to speak about my ventures at the 40-year reunion of our UCT class of 1975, and someone suggested I put pen to paper and finally tell these stories."

So she began working on her book, but it wasn't until last year when she suffered a cycling accident that she completed it. "Both my books have come following cycling accidents," Joan laughs, adding, "I have more books to write, and hopefully it won't take more cycling accidents."

Joan Louwrens' author pic, on the steps of a deserted Antarctic research station. Photo: Jeff Topham