Faith is making the impossible normal

Take off the limits

To dare to dream the impossible when the dreams are inspired by God who declares through Jesus Christ that with God nothing shall be impossible to him that believes is one key aspect of faith that becomes very personal to those who have experiences in life when looking back cannot explain but fully appreciate with gratitude that they have lived impossible dreams.

I am constantly challenging the frame of reference within which I exist about its limitations, the creeping claws of doubt, disbelief, and despair seek to clamp you down into the perfunctory, the crimps offer what is run-of-mill, as you limp along in life with nothing exceptional for a story or an existence.

Latch unto the extraordinary

Then from within you rises a storm of protest, defying every known physical, mental, or structural boundary, telling you that the lived experience of people who did wonders and told of miracles is not the stuff of fantasy left in the unimaginative construct of the cessationist who has determined and declared that modern day has no need of miraculous living.

Be it the ideas that blow the mind and move the footsteps of mankind in strides too grand to fathom, the thoughts that defy every natural force, the belief that you can write a better story that even fiction would struggle to express, or the knowledge that with God on your side, everything is rigged in your favour, just because it is God’s will and it exists because God so loved the world and for that, He gave us Jesus Christ.

Think the impossible

I feed my thoughts with inspiration and revelation, mountains are to be moved, and problems will pass into the memory of insignificance with the triumph wrought on the cross and lived by faith in God. The insurmountable is reduced to a plain and a man given just 5 weeks to live at prognosis is writing blogs of a miraculous existence some 15 years later. It is no achievement of mine, just the lovingkindness of God, great mercy, amazing favour, and a love that no words can satisfactorily describe.

That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” [BibleHub: I Corinthians 2:9] What God has prepared for my eyes to see, my ears to hear, and my mind to imagine is predicated on my willingness to believe that God can do everything I can find examples and references about God in the Bible that has been done and duly recorded, with the promise that even greater things than those documented things are possible.

Live a different testimony

It is a world ready to be lived in, not many have found the spaceship of faith piloted by Jesus Christ and facilitated by the Holy Spirit to enjoy the stupendous splendour of that world. Until my last breath, I seek to walk and bask the in reality of that world, for that is why I exist.

Dr Jerry Savelle (1946 - 2024)

A persuasion in pain

My Christian faith has led me on many journeys, in the search of purpose, knowledge, and insight on the issues of life along with looking to understand why we exist and what kind of legacy we might leave, to hope that in the annals of time, our footsteps show sure paths and our deeds are impactful in the lives of others.

In early September 2009, I was in excruciating pain and literally dying from cancer tumours that had consumed most of the area of my left sole and the underneath two of my toes. The only way I could walk on that foot was to bandage it tightly and wear a pair of monk shoes. I had not convinced myself of what remedy for this suffering might be.

Maybe a miracle today

My days and nights were preoccupied with listening to sermons on divine healing as I am also of a Pentecostal inclination; I have followed many leaders of that persuasion in the teachings and revelations they have shared for decades. Skimming through some of the websites of these preachers, I happened upon the itinerary of Jerry Savelle and instinctively, I booked a flight from Amsterdam to London with the view to attend every venue he would be appearing at.

In visiting, I informed some friends who met up for either of the two sessions that I attended, it was also a time of reckoning for me because until then, much as I would have wanted a miracle of healing to deal with this problem, a sense of irresponsibility of allowing my condition to deteriorate to the state I was in quickly dawned on me, because I then found the courage to admit to the seriousness of the disease I had until then kept mainly to myself.

An impartation of sense

Dr Jerry Savelle ministered in two different churches where the fawning of the overseers did not help the setting. The man of God then offered to lay hands on the whole congregation, but I was more like the thronging crowd than the woman with the issue of blood. If I received any virtue, it was commonsense. I did not regret my journey; it just gave me context to tackle an existential threat.

I returned home and booked an urgent appointment with my medical doctor and what followed was a referral, chemotherapy, and a survival which at prognosis if I did not tolerate the therapy left me with just 5 weeks to live.

God is good, always

Dr Jerry Savelle was a raconteur, a man who told wonderfully interesting stories about his Christian walk, he preached and taught about faith, favour, grace, the goodness of God, his motorbike and vintage car collection, his aeroplanes, and the many missions he had in Africa and all over the world. He encouraged and enthused, the titles of his sermons of which I have many just made you want to listen to what he had to say.

In Hard Times God Will Rescue You (YouTube playlist) is one set of 3 sermons he preached in 2022 that I have listened to many times in the last year to find great encouragement during my own personal hard times. Whenever I have needed the lifting up of my spirit and a reassurance of God’s love, I would seek out a message by Jerry Savelle either from my large MP3 archive of messages going back 25 years or a recent online impartation to the body of Christ on his itinerary in recent times.

An exemplary man of God

He represented a man of integrity, principle, purpose, faith, and good humour. He had been mentored by and been friends with many of the great men of faith who have either passed on or are well into their 80s. While I am saddened at his passing, he was a sure example of how to live the Christian life and be an exemplar of the eternal life that now is unto the life to come.

He always spoke fondly of Carolyn, his wife of almost 60 years, his two daughters and his grandchildren, he lived a full, exciting, and wonderful life. I think one quite important thing I learnt from his teachings was God is also interested in the things that bring us joy, be they pursuits or hobbies, as long as they do not distract you from eternal purpose.

He will be missed, but with the body of work in books, sermons, teachings, and stories he left for us, we can be thankful there was someone who showed that the person and character of God is for us to really find out, know of, and revel in the joy of living, knowing Jesus Christ and God the Father.

From futility to fruitfulness

As it ought

Indeed, I have faltered in my thought,
For long have I determinedly fought,
As a fisherman every night was fraught,
For the fish needed, never caught.

To your audience was I then brought,
And a boat for a soapbox you sought,
From which the people sat to be taught,
The parables of heaven you wrought.

Then the nets once cast for naught,
You spoke to me and I sighed to aught,
In response, you gave a grunt in retort,
Suddenly the greatest catch overwrought,
A boat and two were packed to the port.

In your words were a bounty bought,
Delivered from the pain of want and rot,
In miracles you ever generously allot,
To show we were never an afterthought.

Inspired by The Chosen, Series 1, Episode 4 – The Rock On Which It Is Built 

The spirit of Viagra moved upon the waters

Executive direction (ED) of purpose

For particularly medical reasons, I have never considered the use of Viagra, and this is because of the apparent side effects that greeted its advent on the scene almost a quarter of a century ago.

Besides, on the wide spectrum of erectile dysfunction, there would be no need for it except for recreational purposes and I have had encounters with certain who have required medical attention for painful priapism, and I doubt they have summoned up the courage to tell of their ordeal in jest even after a decade of their somewhat embarrassing experience.

The rise of watery things

However, my eyes fell on this tale at the weekend, and it deserves some commentary, for the story suggests that the drinking water at a church in Kenya was laced with Viagra which led to the arousal of all male members in the church and some attempting to exploit their situation fully in harassing female members of the congregation. [The World News: Kenyan Police Hunting For 19-Year-Old Girl Suspected Of Adding Viagra In A Church Water Tank]

I am quite amused that all 17 male members in the church drank the water in sufficient quantities before the service to all be aroused literally at the same time, it almost feels like the water was fed to a trough and snouts sunk in to take their fill, maybe an affliction of thirst befell them all at once, or someone received the revelation that the water now had the properties of the biblical Pool of Bethesda where the first who got in was healed and for this church in Taita Taveta County all male members rose to an occasion they had not been invited to.

Men seeking a Jezebel

Taita Taveta County is far enough from the major Kenyan cities of Mombasa or Nairobi, that one might think that kind of excitement in the congregation is rapturous and calling for orgasmic ululation, but we would be quite ahead of ourselves because it is not clear from the story that the water was tested to determine if it was indeed laced with Viagra or some other Sildenafil compound.

Meanwhile, the police are after a suspect, Tracey Fadhili, 19, who apparently lives near the church and was seen at the church compound the previous evening, but this does not suggest she was the culprit. I would not want to cast aspersions on the investigative competence of the rural police force, I, however, have my doubts that she was responsible for this situation. It begs the question of why she would lace the water storage with Viagra and to what end? As there is no other backstory on her, one can only wonder. They found a Jezebel to castigate.

Send them home for it

Adding to my amusement is the idea that this free blessing of manhood excitation is considered shocking. Involuntary as the response might have been, it can hardly be considered shocking for it might well be a miraculous manifestation for those who had given up on believing Lazarus could rise again. What I would not accept is the idea that the use of Viagra makes you lecherous that there is literally no self-control and the aroused seeks to mate with the next available female they cast their lascivious eyes on. Does the church even believe in miracles anymore?

Furthermore, a male organ erection is not a weird feeling, that it happened during a church service, unfortunate as it might seem, is not against nature or the expression of self, weirder things have happened to men and this, I can assure you is not one of them.

If the pastor were at any time inspired and directed, he would have come to one useful realisation, closed the service, blessed the congregation, and encouraged the men to go home to their wives and girlfriends with the word that of hope, faith and love that endure, love is the greatest of all, and when boosted by the ramifications of Viagra, you make for a happier church. What more can we ask for? Leave Tracey Fadhili alone, she did no wrong.

World AIDS Day 2021 - A reflection

I was unpersuaded

World AIDS Day is what I mostly celebrate in quiet contemplation rather than with fanfare and symbolism. I reflect on the life that I have lived, the good fortune that has smiled on me and the privilege of living at a time when possibilities existed long after all hope was literally lost.

I have been living with HIV as diagnosed since September 2002, I might well have had it for much longer, I cannot tell. At diagnosis, I threw caution to the winds and lived in a careless and carefree world, almost daring the worst to happen, like I was invincible and inviolable.

In mid-2005, I attended a medical check-up where the consultant proposed a regime of strong Vitamin B medication with some prophylaxis to protect my kidneys, it seemed a rather severe action to take when I was not presenting any issues. For that consultation, however, my wallet was lightened by €1,800. The knowledge and experience made me quite averse to learning more about what more I could do, including getting a second opinion.

The signs were screaming

By late 2008, the chef de reception, Javier, at one of my holiday haunts had noticed things about my pallor and wellbeing, he suggested I have my health checked out, I went through the motions but did not do a lot about it. Then in June 2009, some friends came to visit me in Amsterdam, and we went out to Kinderdijk to see the windmills, but on our way back, I was overcome with tiredness and weakness I had never experienced before, on the day they left, I broke out with shingles.

Blog - Javier

Meanwhile, I was nursing what I thought was athlete’s foot on the sole of my left foot, it was not clearing up, it was getting painful and beginning to weep. Another part of my folly kicked in, I seemed to desire more miraculous healing than a medical intervention. All that messing around in me, I still travelled to Berlin for the Christopher Street Day celebrations, then returned home to nurse myself back to a semblance of health.

Laying on of wands

In August, the foot became even more bothersome, and I was still desperately seeking some sudden rather than a gradual easing of my pain. A visit to a friend who was able to persuade me to attend her birthday, having recently had cancer in remission, she introduced me to new pain medication, which helped a bit as I endured in my foolishness.

I travelled to London in early September to attend a church service with Jerry Savelle, a word of faith preacher ministering, who laid hands on me, and I felt nothing, but it was at that point that came to my senses, I think. It was not going to be a magical moment.

I showed my best friend my foot and told him how I was suffering, not giving him the time to even say much than just acknowledge that he might just lose me. I told him; I had allowed my condition to deteriorate to a stage that I might have no other options left.

Only left with Plan B

Returning home to Amsterdam, I sorted out my insurance provisions and visited my doctor on an emergency appointment because I was in excruciating pain. She took one look at my foot and immediately said, this looks serious, I need to refer you. There and then she booked an appointment with the hospital, dressed my foot and prescribed some strong painkillers. My visit to the hospital two days later called for a further referral which was scheduled for the Tuesday after the weekend, once I told them I was HIV positive, they had reached conclusions I was yet to realise.

The HIV until September 2009 had been untreated since the September 2002 diagnosis and what was presenting was evident immunodeficiency, opportunistic infections, and the heretofore untreatable athlete’s foot, was in fact, Kaposi’s Sarcoma (a kind of skin cancer), I had full-blown AIDS.

I am fortunate and privileged

What World AIDS Day means to me is even in that extremely dire situation, I lived in a country with healthcare, service and support to attend to my immediate need, that there was an extremely high level of medical competence and expertise available to me without castigation or judgement, I just presented a challenge they had met many times before.

Fundamentally, they had confidence borne of experience and understanding drawn from the many cases and lives before mine whose contributions to the body of knowledge in the management and treatment of HIV and AIDS whether they survived or not meant that people like me had better chances of survival. I was not a lost cause.

Your miracle is in medicine

Indeed, it was a medical intervention that saved me, I did not abandon my religious beliefs, for that really helped me keep my mind and my head through the toughest times and I have told of that in many stories. I have by adversity been won to the miracle of medicine and medical expertise, why it matters, and it is not a negation or a repudiation of any other belief system, it is as much a gift to humanity as it is the emancipation and progression of civilisation.

You ask, how could someone so westernised, educated, enlightened and knowledgeable have allowed his condition to deteriorate to such a life-threatening situation? Then you begin to understand that the strengths and weaknesses of our humanity are myriad, amid apparent wisdom and knowledge can be stark ignorance, irrationality, stupidity and worse. Sometimes, we just need to forgive our own stupidity so we can learn to use a bit of wisdom.

Let’s just say, we have been steeped in such bad education that the process of unlearning to allow some new learning can be painfully difficult and consequently life-affirming. I am well, healthier than I have been in decades, on antiretroviral medication with an undetectable viral load for over 12 years. All thanks to medicine and the wealth of lives and deaths that have made it possible for all of us living with HIV to be productive members of our small and large communities. This needs to be shared around the world more.

Happy World AIDS Day!

Blogs – The Cancer Tales.

Can you abandon your experience for the extraordinary?

Learning to trust beyond experiences

I sometimes consider my situation with amusement, for I had yesterday said Sunday might well be a day of rest. I cannot say it became the day of expected rest for in the morning I made for church after a night the tracker said was better, but I appeared to struggle through trying to get more sleep beyond vivid dreams.

The message at church was based on trust and being saved from situations and disaster as depicted in the narration where the disciples saw Jesus walking on water in the middle of a stormy sea. The majority of disciples being fishermen would have known the reality of stormy seas. Small boats at the mercy of billowing waves, the fishermen caught between life and death, terrified at their helplessness. [Romans 10:5-15 (NKJV)][Matthew 14:22-33 (NKJV)]

Beyond that, even if the fishermen were strong and able swimmers, it is doubtful that when hit by a storm they’ll just jump in the water and swim to shore and safety. Besides, they might also know other fishermen that would have perished at sea without trace lost forever in the deep as a lingering memory of the dangers of their trade.

Don’t let it be too strange

It is in this context that they saw a man, the man Jesus walking on water and obviously from their experience at sea would immediately think it impossible and suppose they were seeing a spirit. Their being tossed about in their boat was compounded by the fear of the incomprehensible.

It is then that Jesus said, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.” Yes, he told them, and of the many translations, I like the God’s Word Translation the best, "Calm down! It's me. Don't be afraid!" [BibleHub: Matthew 14:27]

It was as if Jesus was saying He knew they had never experienced this before and it was time for them to experience the incredible and add it to their wealth of personal experience and the full recognition of his authority on earth. You could not have witnessed this and remained the same afterwards.

How our experiences rob us of the divine

Whilst they were busy processing that information, Peter said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” To which Jesus simply said, “Come!”. At the point Peter did step off the boat with all his fisherman experience in the middle of a stormy sea and walked on water towards Jesus. Until it dawned on him, fishermen don’t walk on water and he began to sink.

We can agree he was far enough from the boat not to grab it and near enough to Jesus when he cried from help and Jesus stretched out his hand to catch him, they both walked back to the boat, and the storm ceased.

For all the additional perspectives to add to this situation, there is one evident thing, your worldly experience limits your ability to experience the wonder and power of God. Then, if you do go against every knowledge you have to listen to and act on the one-word command of Come, you will experience the power of God and when your personal experience begins to cloud that godly experience, you only have cried out to be saved and brought to safety, whether you have little or great faith.

For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” [BibleGateway: Romans 10:13]

That was the depth and beauty of the sermon in church today

Thought Picnic: Traversing the universes of the mind

Deep calling upon deep

As human beings we are a mystery unexplained and sometimes too complex and indecipherable to comprehend. The physical we see does not begin to plumb the depths of our nature, our thoughts, and our inclinations.

In the world of dreams the mind travels beyond the realms of the possible to universes of experiences unfathomable. The people who crowd into the movies of our subconscious bridging the expanses of time and space that is it impossible to fully relate or remember.

The stuff of dreams

That I have covered amazing distances in incredible leaps or flown like a superhero between continents is not so much a strange thing. Traversing the worlds of the natural and the supernatural with superhuman abilities display the unlimited expanse of the imagination only trammelled by the extent to which we can afford to be curious.

Whilst it might be alarming to some, that at the same time and place, voices and faces of the long departed, the knowing present and the unknown future can play in conversation, admonition or the creation of new experiences is a wonder that words can never fully explain. I have fought in my dreams and talked loudly in some, caught up in battles I can never understand how I got into but given the means to win through.

Dimensions unmeasurable

I cannot afford to be afraid of the power of my mind to conjure and to compel, they are gifts of the subconscious we all have to gain strength to surmount things we heretofore would never have had the courage to face.

A human alive is a mystery and through trial and tribulation, there is a force of hope, the assurance of faith and the power of love to take us beyond the ethereal existence of dreams to a reality that is the stuff of miracles come true.

A decade from AIDS to life and living

A day of thanks

Today marks an anniversary, a celebration of life in thankfulness and gratitude, quite a miracle too, but I cannot be any less grateful.

As the church service ended, we are asked if we have a point of prayer, we could visit a chapel to be prayed for. My prayer point was one of thanks, I told the priest that 10 years ago today I was admitted in hospital with full-blown AIDS and just a week later, I was told I only had 5 weeks to live if my physiology could not tolerate the medicine.

The week before my admission, I had visited my doctor with an unbearably painful weeping sore on the sole of my foot, it had started as what I thought was a fungal infection, probably Athlete’s foot in the summer, but it didn’t seem to go away.

My foolish pride

Meanwhile, I was praying and hoping that I might just get a miracle cure, I had gone to London the week before because one of the faith healing preachers that I had grown up with, in a fraught and challenging Pentecostal, Evangelical and Word-of-faith suffused environment was visiting. I was there expecting Jerry Savelle to lay hands on me and suddenly I will be made whole.

I battled with the wisdom and foolishness of my situation, hinting to my friend at one time that he must think I am mad to endure so much pain and not seek essential medical attention. I was looking for a quick-fix to a situation I paid little heed to until it was impossible to ignore it.

By the time I saw my doctor on the 15^th of September 2009, she was in no doubt that the condition I was in was serious. She plied me with painkillers and immediately scheduled a referral to a specialist hospital, the day after.

In the truth of my pain

At the hospital, they booked an appointment for me to attend the internal medicine department at the earliest possible time, that was 4 days away including the intervening weekend.

When I arrived at the hospital, the pain could only be eased with my foot up, whilst I was not yet in delirium, there were times I just cried out of utter anguish. I was in a wheelchair when the professor arrived to have a look at me. He said, under no circumstances could I return home, I looked too ill. In the next sentence, he said, “We have a bed for you upstairs.”

That began the first day of the 18 nights I eventually spent in the hospital. A battery of tests with processes of elimination followed, more importantly, they needed to be sure my condition was not a complication of diabetes, after which blood tests and a biopsy determined exactly what I had.

AIDS-defining cancer

On the sole of the left foot was advanced Kaposi's Sarcoma, a kind of skin cancer redolent of advanced AIDS complications, but also common to West Africans, mine was AIDS-defining. They could treat it with liposomal doxorubicin with the brand name Caelyx, a chemotherapy drug as long as I could tolerate it.

At the same time, I was put on antiretroviral drugs, the morphine painkillers had to be changed because after two days, I could keep nothing down, I had to tolerate the pain more than was necessary, but I was already on the mend.

On the blood test results, my HIV viral load was astronomically high, my CD4 count was at a nadir of 20, whatever was keeping me alive was beyond medical explanation but my consultant believed if I responded well to the concoction of treatments, I will survive this life-threatening situation.

And after this?

We had no discussion of life expectancy after this dire situation, but I had read a study that at my CD4 count before commencing treatment, rarely had people lived up to 10 years. That thought lingered in my subconscious as I realised and understood that I was beginning a new life after cancer.

And so today marks the day that I became an exception to the study, not so much one of my triumphs, yet, the marvel of modern medicine is revealed my body and the state of my health. Beyond it, I have lived an enchanted life, full of thanks and better attention to understanding my health, my options, adherent to advice and where I have had doubts, challenged the accepted premise. It is my body first before it is anyone’s guinea pig.

Giving thanks

I have medicine to thank, Prof Dr Kees Brinkman is exemplary and exceptional, with other consultants, nurses and medical personnel who have contributed their expertise towards my having this day worthy of note, I will soon visit to thank again.

My friends who stood with me through the toughest times of my life, I can neither thank nor repay enough, Kola, Ola, John (deceased), Sola, Kayode, Peter, Steve, Marc, the de Wolf family, the Kiran family, my C3 family in Amsterdam. Then many other people have in my frailty and my limited ability given opportunity, access, and chances to rebuild my career.

Then, I have a man who has put one of the widest smiles on my face, happiness in my life and joy in my heart, Brian. I am fortunate and thankful; I am probably one of the luckiest persons on earth today.

Postscript

One final note is to stress the need for regular testing, early diagnosis, getting involved in reviewing options for treatment, the immediate use of therapies and an understanding of the prognosis, the condition, and the prospects you have. Medicine offers the best outcomes for HIV/AIDS situations, and where other remedies intervene, their efficacy must always be tested and verified against medical results under supervision of a consultant. Only let medicine be the ultimate arbiter of any claim of a cure.

Keeping my blood pressure normal

Will Uber help my blood pressure?

My biannual check-up came up again yesterday, and it is interesting that much as the same things happen, each episode is a story in its own right. First, I needed to ensure my hospital card and medical journal where I record significant milestones were in my pocket and for a 10:00 AM, the job of getting there had to go to Uber.

Much as I gave myself enough time, the Uber driver not only took a circulatory route to the hospital, I was again afraid that by the time I had my blood pressure taken before seeing the consultant, it would be reading at levels brought on by anxiety as in the case of my last two visits. Literally, through the ride, he was chatting on his handsfree phone as I sat beside him, not an activity that prepares you for a high rating.

In any case, I kept calm, arrived with 7 minutes to spare before my scheduled appointment and sat in the waiting area expecting to be called to take a few measurements of my height; as if that would change, my weight; which does change frequently and my blood pressure; which read within the normal scales.

The nurse who tended to me was a slightly older man who I was seeing for the first time, he had made a career transition from a driving instructor to nursing, quite unusual but interesting.

The bloody tales are good

When the consultant called me in, she who had taken over the department from the consultant who retired last year and was involved in some charity work in Myanmar, I reckoned we had not seen each other for about 18 months. When we first met, I had done my research about her, seen most of her recent seminar and conference presentations and determined how she had come about her foreign name.

In her consulting room was a quiet student doctor that I tried to involve and engage in the conversation. I am freely aggregable to having students sit in on my consultations, considering others allowed that for the expertise and treatments I now enjoy.

We started with the pleasantries before reading the runes of my bloods, the tests were done six months before, the counts good, the loads good too, then kidney, liver and cardiovascular functions looking good too. That niggling issue with Vitamin B12 and folic acid deficiency anaemia was still there, improved, but not yet the acceptable region.

All the jokes about how folic acid helps my maternal tissue along with returning to be served by the Bra Advisor at Marks and Spencer’s seemed to flow in the conversation to initial confusion and consequent laughter. We scheduled in a facility to get my full results electronically and apart from doing the blood yesterday, I also got the kit for bloods for my next appointment.

Besides that, there were questions about my love life and sex life, the former is non-existent whilst I search for someone and the latter, we all have needs.

A change of pills after 8 years is possible

During that discussion, we reviewed the situation with my HAND test which I had last year and the possibility that the drug regimen I have been on since May 2010 might have some contributory factors. New drugs also have become mainstream and there was a need to begin to consider switching to the newer drug therapies.

Whilst I have resisted the switch to generics, I was willing to review the options if provided with the information. I was given three options to research and we would select a course in three months’ time.

I was 12^th in the queue at the phlebotomists’ when on going in, I was told the computers were down and that I needed to return to the clinic to get a printout of the bloods to be taken.

More to the vials and the colours

It was there that I learnt from the nurse who tended to me earlier that the colour coding on the blood vials was pertaining to the kinds of additives or reagents that were added to the blood for testing purposes.

Certain reagents clotted the blood, others thinned it, then colouration and other reactions with the blood helped in the test selection for each sample of blood taken along with the timeframe within which the blood must be tested. If you need to know, I have provided a few links for you to review. [Geeky Medics – Blood Bottles Guide] [KCH Vacuette® Selection Chart – PDF] [UHB – Clinical Microbiology Tests]

In some ways. I am surprised that I was never that curious about what those colour codings meant, I was more concerned about the number of vials being drawn to sate the thirst of the vampires’ convention.

I returned to have my blood taken, picked up my 3-month prescription and that was my appointment done until I get an email for my results and possibly a letter from my General Practitioner (GP), that is what we call family doctors here to visit for a booster injection for Vitamin B12.

Loving 52 and the stories that tell themselves

My miraculous existence

It is almost stranger than fiction that today marks my 52^nd birthday and this is for many reasons. It is my ninth birthday after cancer and I am still scarily within the timeframe of studies that suggest a precarious survival rate after the condition in which I was diagnosed.

Yet, I feel blessed that each year that I celebrate a birthday is one in which I can only be full of thankfulness and gratitude. Each birthday is for me very important, I mark each of them since 2009 as it would be my last, well aware of my vulnerabilities and still amazed by the grace, the favour and the resilience of the human body to recover where medicine seems to have reached the limits of its favourable interventions.

Emotional upheavals of thrills

It has been a long exhausting year which started with the lovingly sympathetic sharing of my story by my good friend Funmi Iyanda in forAkin on Bravery, Honesty and Thriving, a few days after, the love I thought I had was not ready for my love, it hurt.

Just imagine meeting your sister after 27 years, at The Terminal in Frankfurt, it has been a roller-coaster of emotional upheavals from the marriage of one sister, to the death of our baby sister to the rendezvous with my second sister.

In March, I made a radical career decision, one morning, I walked out of a job I had been doing for three years because I had endured enough of a new manager who over the 6 months of my reporting to him reduced me to nothing through disrespect, discourtesy and worse. He apparently did not last another 6 months after me, I neither applaud nor deride him.

Away but not astray

Since then, I have spent weeks away from home for work flung out to corners all around the United Kingdom, getting involved in challenging projects and meeting interesting people. I could not have planned how the year turned around for me that the greatest recommendation and support for the role I started in November came from one of the colleagues most affected by my departure in March.

I pinch myself at times wondering if any of it is real, considering August was a month where I literally had nothing and there was the sure and the steady rock of a friend like no other who kept me believing in tomorrow and myself. Kola Akinola, this is for you.

I am happy and thankful

In August too, my father found my story, his initial reaction was negative, then after an exchange of some long memories, there was reconciliation and acceptance, he remains one of the most reasonable people I have known in all my life. I have a mother too, that is all I can say for now.

To a point, I am very happy, I could be happier with someone to love and to share moments and experiences with, I need a man.

As I celebrate the number of years as there are full weeks in a year, even in my relapsed religious faith, I am thankful to God, grateful for friends, appreciative of moments, awed by experiences and looking forward to the opportunity to write again of another year of stories worth telling.

Thank you all for being here, being there and being near.

Pricked for new life stories

Acting on my mentality

Generally, I should make a mental note of when my next hospital appointment is. In fact, not only should I have made that note, I must prepare for it. My next appointment is in the third week of February.

Now, it is best to visit the phlebotomist two weeks prior to my appointment, ensuring the consultant gets to discuss the results of my blood tests at our meeting. It goes without saying that my mental note for my last appointment did not yield the appropriate action, when I finally found out, the appointment had passed, I was recalled for a new appointment, failing which I would have been taken off the patient list.

Lacking in some mentality

The lack of preparation for my last appointment meant we had no opportunity to discuss my blood work since it was done on the same day of my visit. I was to write to my consultant two weeks later to discuss the results, but the year crowded itself out on me. It can wait.

I chose today to visit the phlebotomist, got out the urine sample container and found myself turning the house upside-down looking for my blood card which lists the tests to be conducted and hence the number of vials of blood to be drawn.

All night, I wondered and disputed within myself as to what I might have done with that slip of paper until it occurred to me that the whole process had been computerised and my consultant had not really given me a blood card. He told me then, six months ago, I didn't need one, it was all on computer now. Phew!

Eschewing a wrong mentality

I was picked up by an Ethiopian Uber cab driver and as we talked about sickness, health, religion and abuse, he informed me of an Orthodox faith healer of whom he had observed healing miracles and as I made to step out of the cab at the hospital I was advised to consult the healer and forget these hospital visits.

I have been there before, I almost died trying all avenues to receive a miracle before I decided on the miracle of medicine. The process of unschooling ourselves from the carbuncles of cultural, traditional and religious errors of reason and living continues daily. Some things we know within ourselves are better left unsaid when entreated to channel our energies down a certain path.

Having the right mentality

The blood room was full, I picked a ticket numbered 61 when then tally display read 19, it was not as long a wait as I thought it would be. When I introduced myself to the phlebotomist, the computer did not have the detail gathered on one screen, she looped through screens until 7 vials were gathered in the dish. Another vampires’ convention, I quipped.

The blood was drawn in short order and soon I was out and back on my way home. In two weeks, another story of life would be told from the voice of the bloods.

Thought Picnic: Alone and thoughtful of the week passing

Collecting my thoughts

Alone at home with the opportunity to collect my thoughts at the end of a terrible week of sorrowful news, my therapy begins here.

Entrenched in our bunkers of grief at the passing of a sister survived by aging parents and much older siblings everyone is ensconced somewhere on the spectrum of the Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief.

I cannot speak in any clarity of the reaction of others, but on receiving the news on Tuesday, I was quite shocked but not surprised. I understood to some extent the graveness of the diagnosis having had some doctor friends of mine independently assess the situation and offer a general prognosis.

In miracles of medicine

In view of that, I was already preparing myself for an eventuality against the hopes and anticipations of others who’s only fading desire was for a miracle. I do believe in miracles, miracles of human ingenuity that has come through amazing advances in knowledge and technology.

Human physiology, however, reacts in different ways to thought processing and medicine, the outcomes then determine by reason of speed and progress whether something miraculous has happened or not.

Respite and relapse are not miracles, remission might look miraculous, but we do have to look elsewhere for the underpinning elements of our unresearched assumptions of the miraculous. I have read of miracles, but I have seen no evidence of any from a conclusively scientific point of view.

Believing in human ingenuity

When I faced the prospect of a terminal prognosis from cancer some 7 years ago, I know when I stopped hoping for a miracle and went for the understanding and knowledge of medicine. They knew what the ailment was, knew how to treat it, but had a simple caveat, it all depended on how I could withstand the treatment, failing which, I would be dead in 5 weeks.

I survived and there is no doubt that medicine played a major part in that, but my ability to withstand the onslaught of chemotherapy was strengthened by my Christian faith. The end of the matter was that it took a considerably lesser time for the cancer lesions to heal and my doctors and nurses termed that miraculous. I accept that with much gratitude and thankfulness.

Failings of Nigerian healthcare systems

We had no such choices in the medical institutions in Nigeria, the sometime foremost teaching hospital could not conclusively determine the ailment and as they charged inordinate sums of money never did have the means or equipment to start any of the ameliorating treatments necessary whilst we sought a better medical opinion of the real situation.

On knowing what the situation was, there were different forces at play, from the desperate and imposing to the rational and pragmatic, within that dynamic more confusion took hold over the need to coalesce and communicate. Browbeaten by a system that demanded trust without question, there were splits in decision-making and consequently, division leading to rancour.

On choices, outcomes, and reactions

The principal in the matter rarely had a say in whatever outcomes were proposed even though she had in no uncertain terms clearly indicated what her choices were. I probably was too understanding about what she was adamant of and accepting of that viewpoint that she was no more fighting and so I did not press an alternative or find the need to persuade otherwise.

Beneath the whole thing, I was very angry and very sad, angry that so much could have been better managed long before it became critical, angrier that the more primitive of passions ruled over the rational mind in the many syncretic rituals that were supposed to have put this whole matter at bay decades ago.

I was apoplectic with rage at the absence of the support for the discipline necessary to help the infirm. There is no doubt that I was both cross and angry with the matriarch, her influence over many issues made it literally impossible to pursue a rational line of thinking and ideas. I was sad, that the end was nigh.

For her honour and memory

Yet, in the aftermath of all this, I am supposed to let bygones be bygones and seek some sort of resolution towards reconciliation. It is going to be difficult, yet, we must hope that something good would come out of this, in honour of the dearly departed and hopefully as a sign of respect and tribute to her short but eventful life.

It is still very raw, and whilst I am well past denial, I am still deep in anger and feeling somewhat depressed, I cannot yet see the light at the end of the tunnel called acceptance. The dead never need worry about these things anymore, the living, however, have a duty to ensure that the dead are not forgotten in the swirl of our petty differences.

Thought Picnic: These things

These silly things

In my little way, there are things that intrigue and amuse me that to others might seem silly and that is fine with me.

Single and unattached, the tendency to a hermit’s existence is readily available and in that, times of introspection and thought with the occasional lapse into unhealthy mental assays that do nothing for confidence or esteem.

Yet, one must as needs allow travel these lonely courses in search of new light and insight, upon which one might happen on interesting self-discovery or heightened realisation.

These serious things

Nowhere has this been revealing as the wonder of medicine in my lifetime and that fact that for every advance in medicine that I have had the opportunity to avail myself of, I have been blessed to benefit greatly without the encumbrance of archaic beliefs, strange customs or weird interpretations preventing me.

Born some ten weeks before I was due, medicine gave me an incubator where in many other places without knowledge or resource I might have expired into a memory of loss like my half-brother Iriri some 40 or so years later.

These useful things

I marvel at how at one time, threats loom by the tales in my blood and after taking a prescription, some with unbelievable side-effects, new tales are told, with the threat literally snuffed out or markedly weakened.

Medicine today when viewed through the prism of beliefs established over a millennium ago will look like witchcraft, much as the aircraft we fly in today would to the inventors of man in flight, just over a century ago.

There is a lot in the knowledge pool of humanity to benefit us physically, mentally and possibly spiritually. As a pragmatist, I avail myself of all that keeps me alive, lively, reflective and happy. Let us detach ourselves from the fatalism of fate out of our hands and embrace the joy of living.

People on a train of life

Let me sit

The man had splayed himself across two seats when I got on the train and kindly asked him to make room for me. Nothing could have prepared me for one of the most engaging conservations I have had on a train journey in a while.

He appeared to be in workmen’s clothes and I gingerly sat myself beside him just because my trolley bag which is generally heavier and bulkier than a simple rucksack needs more ample space than I can get in the standard seat space.

A conversation triggered

As I settled into my seat, I reached into my bag, grabbed my copy of The Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine and flipped the pages to read, Among the reindeer by Laura Galloway, who left a media consultancy to live amongst the Sami people; Laplanders to you and me, in the Arctic Circle after a DNA test suggested she descended from them.

He saw the page and said, he was on his way up there. Apparently, he is a fisherman who works on a big boat in the seas and oceans within the Arctic Circle.

From then on, for the hour, we talked about fishing, European fishing quotas, fortunes, misfortunes - he once owned a fishing trawler, the cold and how he suffered some of the coldest temperatures ever on one fishing expedition on the Bering Sea.

Fish of a long tale

He had come to Cheshire for a funeral, was travelling to Manchester, and changing trains for a journey all the way to Aberdeen where he would board a helicopter to Wick and then a flight to Reykjavik in Iceland. Quite a convoluted itinerary, I thought, but it must be one of the least travelled routes plied by only those in the know.

He had been a fisherman all his life, manning boats from when he was 10, he being in the fourth generation of fishermen from his family.

One thing I learnt from our conversation was the appearance of a man is no indicator of the wealth of knowledge he might have, how well he might have travelled and what good conversation you might have with the person.

Suffice it to say, I am yet to read the story in the magazine that started off our conversation. At Manchester Piccadilly Station, we shook hands, I gave him directions as to where to board his connecting train and he expected to be in Reykjavik by midnight.

Now, I can see

On another train journey, a mother and child got on and sat in front of me. They were returning from visiting her mother and the son who had glasses on seem to have had a wonderful half-term holiday away.

We engaged in enough small talk for me to discover one amazing miracle of medicine, the son had a very high auditory acuity (heightened sense of hearing) which for a while was sensory compensation for being born blind, but now he could see because he had undergone a penetrating keratoplasty (Corneal transplant).

Opinion: Miracle Cures and Against Religious Abuse of the Vilest Kind

Where I stand

There are some things are really get me seriously agitated and they pertain to rights and abuse. In the body of work I have produced over almost 9 years, I think these particularly stand out - human rights, injustice, child rights, women’s rights, sexuality rights, child sexual abuse, sexual violence, cultural and religious abuse.

There is no doubt that I also cover very controversial issues; it is just my nature to tackle those as passionately and objectively as I can.

Too vile for words

This morning I found myself on a Twitter soapbox dealing with religious abuse of the vilest kind. A church had concocted a cocktail of fruit juice and olive oil then marketed it as a cure for cancer or HIV; the prayer component of the product making up about 50% of the price.

People with chronic and terminal illnesses are desperately in need of succour and hope; they are vulnerable to the machinations of those who portend to offer palliation or cures for their ailments.

Hope like greed is easily exploited and nowhere is that best manipulated than in churches where the leaders with ethereal provenance and esoteric rituals that could border on the macabre but pass off as spiritual hold sway.

Your church as a ghetto

These churches serve as both communities and places of worship but the community aspect almost turns the congregants into members of a ghetto that project practices very different from the wider communities in which they exist. Like Nigerians in the United Kingdom doing only Nigerian things.

People need to feel comfortable wherever they go but to be exploited in this way is unforgivable.

There should be a number of inalienable facts that people should have when attending these churches which on closer scrutiny are more like sepulchres of despair engaged in commercial activity for the aggrandisement of the church leaders.

Rather than minister to their flock, their flock ministers to their every greedy need for ostentation and hedonism which they suggest are the fruits of service to God – they are not shepherds but wolves conducting assemblies with grandiloquent names that will be redolent of B-movie thrillers.

Miracles are free

Now, miracles do exist, but never for a fee, the best example of a miracle was when Jesus raised Lazarus who was 4-days dead petrifying and decomposing in a tomb for free. Neither did he charge for converting water into wine at the wedding feast where one would have expected at best a donation. It is implausible that those ministering in the name of Jesus will then demand some payment directly, by gimmickry or through the sale of potions to offer healing to those still alive but with terminal illnesses. Miracles are free, every time and always.

People should be very lucid about the function of the church and the function of medicine. They are not mutually exclusive. Using medicine is not a sign of the lack of faith; in fact faith and medicine can make the medicine more efficacious.

My testimony is that I had cancer and went on chemotherapy, according to the oncologist and nurses that came daily to dress the cancer lesions, it took up to six months for lesions as mine to dry up and disappear, but in my case, the lesions were all gone in 8 weeks. The doctors considered my response to medication and the result miraculous.

The church and healing

The church should not replace your hospital neither should your pastor replace your doctor. They have their roles. If your pastor does say to you, you are healed; you have the right to a second opinion, a medical opinion to confirm you are healed.

In all cases where Jesus healed lepers, He told them to go and show themselves to the priests, this, I believe was to fulfil all righteousness as they’ll say in religious parlance – or commonly, to ensure all boxes were ticked to allow their re-admittance into society.

Ultimately, if you are paying for any treatment and it is not to a professionally accredited medical practitioner, to a hospital or to a pharmacy for medicine, you have been swindled by a confidence trickster impostor masquerading as a pastor when they are in fact no better than bush witchdoctors.

Your pastor is not your doctor

Your pastor should have nothing against the use of doctors, hospitals or medicine, not everyone exercises feats of faith that at an instant will manifest as lightning bolt miraculous cures. Any assurance of healing should include the advice to have the medically competent confirm the change in physiology indicating healing – it is NOT a sin to do so.

As I have written many times before, never ever discontinue your medication without first consulting your doctor and only on the advice of the doctor and no other. If the pastor did not prescribe your medication the pastor does not have the authority or capacity tell you to discontinue your medicine – do not had your pills over to be destroyed as if you are attending a magician’s show – medications should be properly disposed of by pharmacies or given back to hospitals to be used by those less fortunate than yourself.

Beware!

Just be wary of those who take advantage of you in the religious space, demanding always but never giving, selling goods and snake oil remedies not independently validated by the authorities and whose rituals defy explanation whilst not informing of other reasonable choices or options you should have in this amazing vibrant world we live in today.

Source

Church slammed for selling blackcurrant cordial and olive oil drink as a 'miracle cure' for cancer and HIV : Mail Online

Editorial: Taking Medicine and Talking Miracles

It is an outrage!

There are very few occasions that I am so utterly incensed about some situation and those are usually with reference to child sex abuse, injustice to women, homophobia and religious abuse.

To varying degrees, I could either submit a whole range of opinions on Twitter or in the heat of the moment craft a blog on the matter.

This morning I overheard on SkyNews that some churches had been advising people with apparently incurable and sometimes terminal illnesses especially those infected with HIV to come off their pills because they had been healed.

I believe in miracles

In the interest of full disclosure, I was brought up a High-Church Anglican but converted to Evangelical Pentecostalism almost 3 decades ago. Within this setting we have a whole range of belief systems that allow for supernatural intervention in natural circumstances in matters of prayer, confidence and miracles.

However, I subscribe to that leaning that engages the intellect fully, demands deep religious scholarship and mixes all the vicissitudes of faith with an abundance of reason.

I am wont to using a very basic analogy on the matter of the interaction of medicine and miracles. If you need A wheelchair and after prayer you cannot verifiably discard of THE wheelchair, you still need THAT wheelchair. In essence, you cannot pretend you can walk if you cannot walk.

When it comes to the miraculous healing by reason of faith and all the ceremony that could include the laying on of hands and other obscure activities beyond the understanding of outsiders, some things are self-evident.

The use of medical opinions

Before the person seeks healing, that person would probably have obtained a medical opinion, will most likely have a confirmed diagnosis and usually have begun a treatment regime.

The desire for healing is not an alien thing to human-beings; people need succour, respite, palliation and possibly cures for their illnesses – some of these can be achieved through medicine over a period of time, if medical science offers that prospect or the good grace of a miracle may offer either accelerated improvements in welfare or a sudden change for the better.

The most important thing to know is that a medical opinion remains the certified opinion until a new medical opinion is sought signifying a change for either the better or the worse accompanied with the particular instructions of the medical expert, the condition is technical still the condition before the "miracle".

Medical science must validate miracles

The faith healer, no matter how sensational, amazing, wondrous or even magical the performance that suggests a person has been healed is NOT a medical expert and as such because the same cannot offer certified confirmation of changes to the physiology and state of health of the person supposed healed – the faith healer MUST NEVER assume the role of medical expert and offer medical advice like stopping the usage of medication.

The faith healer can trust that a person is healed, the person may feel in themselves some change either real or imagined but this all must be verified (to fulfil all righteousness) inconvertibly by the medical profession even with the option of a second and third opinion for the certainty and assuredness of the supposed miraculous healing work.

Unconscionable religious irresponsibility

In terms of the news story - Church Tells HIV Patients To Stop Treatment [1], the church after having engaged in their esoteric activities assumed the role of a medical expert service advising those infected with HIV that they had been healed and urging them to stop using their medication.

The story suggests that six such persons who presumably had received healing had needlessly in my view died because the church in a callous, irresponsible, outrageous and reprehensible egregious extension of influence overstepped its remit as an unregulated religious organisation to become an illegal laboratory for guinea-pigs of snake-oil miracle healings.

The law must act

The church failed woefully in its duty of care to its flock and the health of those concerned to ensure that those who they considered healed should first sign-off with medical advice that allows for such people to then come off their medication.

In an ideal world, such an organisation should be proscribed forthwith and the cop-out that they do not heal but God heals cannot hold water if they as intermediaries between God and man portend to speak in God’s name when projecting themselves as a faith healing organisation and then shirk from responsibility when faced with scrutiny for practices that are at best fraudulent and plain deceptive or murderous at worst by reason of the fact that people had placed their lives in the trust of leaders of those churches.

Miracle happen, medicine works

Now, there are records of people who have obtained amazing miracles in this modern age but they all have medical proof of the changes and the medical advice that allows them to discontinue medication because the need for such had been miraculously removed.

On the matter of medicine and miracles, medicine is NOT evil, it is NOT witchcraft and it serves a purpose in the management of illness. Many people of faith have combined their beliefs and medicine to have accelerated results from the use of medical science.

There are amazing advances in medical science that allow for people with HIV to live productive lives with the virus in the blood diminished to undetectable levels, there is no particular reason not to use medical science and religious beliefs in the finding solutions to illness.

Bunkum!

Reading the detail of the news story, the said pastor suggested persistence of diarrhoea and vomiting show the virus is leaving the body – Bunkum! That is probably evidence that the condition of the person is rapidly deteriorating and such a one is in need of immediate medical attention.

I will to God there was a law of the land to bring those people to book and punish them severely for being quacks, charlatans and dishonestly assuming roles of a qualified medical practice.

These people give Christianity a bad name, pervert the gospel for the spectacular and they are sepulchres for the macabre masquerading as churches – their cultist activities must for all that is good, safe and tolerable in modern society be shutdown with immediate effect.

Sources

[1] HIV Deaths: Church Tells Patients To Give Up HIV Drugs After Claiming They Were 'Healed' | UK News | Sky News