Things I Remember or Was Told

Things I Remember, or Was Told, is the memoir of outspoken Wellington GP Carol Shand, who since the early 1960s has spent her life fighting for change in medical, social and legal issues that she considered important: maternity care, access to contraception, abortion law change, and improved response to sexual assault complaints.

Carol is the daughter of Claudia and Tom Shand - a rural GP and a politician respectively. She was born at the outbreak of the Second World War and lived through post-war hardships, and then the peace and prosperity of the latter 20th century and into the 21st. Carol worked in general medical practice in Wellington for 56 years, 34 with her husband Dr Erich Geiringer. She retired in 2017, and still lives in her quarter-acre paradise in Karori, Wellington, surrounded by family, and spending time gardening, playing chamber music, and keeping a small finger in many pies.