Desert Island Discs: Childhood Trauma and Workplace Pastoral Care

In the passing of stories

Listening to the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs has now brought me into the middle of the pandemic, the year 2020.

However, since I began this exercise way back in March, some of the people featured have passed on. I note with particular significance Yvonne Brewster, who was the first person I wrote about.

She passed away on 12th October at the age of 87 and was featured on last week's edition of BBC Radio 4's Last Word. [AkinBlog.NL: Desert Island Discs: To Be Young, Gifted and Black]

The interview format possesses an almost disarming innocence. What gets revealed shows how the context of sharing one's choice of music can inadvertently expose both vulnerability and discovery.

A spectrum of care

Whether it's the child sexual abuse suffered by Christopher Hazlewood, who founded the Paraorchestra, or the obvious abandonment of Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, born mixed race and illegitimate, housed in a convent with nuns whilst her mother visited monthly, you appreciate the kind of trauma that forms part of the history of these remarkable people.

Then there's the story Dame Sally Davies told. At the point of retiring as Chief Medical Officer, she highlighted something missing from today's teaching of vocation, the grooming of talent, and the nurturing of expertise.

On the matter of junior doctors, she observed that pastoral care was missing. Very few knew the name of a consultant; that is, if consultants could even name others they had taken under their wing.

One example stood out. She arrived for an interview in a sports car and, on arrival, ended up in a driving manoeuvre that spun her around 360 degrees.

A consultant stepped out of the department and asked if she had come for the interview. On responding in the affirmative, he called to postpone the interview until the next day, taking the time to settle her down and getting her a cup of tea.

She returned the next day, interviewed, and got the job. However, she said, without the care and consideration of that consultant, she would likely not have got the job.

Care in the workplace

By extension, that lack of pastoral care and consideration of the humanity of junior staff, when interacting with sometimes overworked middle management who are under pressure to deliver to almost impossible terms and without the time to manage effectively, diminishes the productivity of the employee in many unquantifiable ways.

This is besides the way managers use promises they would never fulfil to lure new talent onto their teams.

In the end, it is usually left to the individual to decide whether they are fulfilled in settings that barely appreciate them.

When it comes to the tussle between self-respect and being patronised to the point of feeling belittled, I would hope the former would guide the person towards seeking greener pastures whilst nipping avoidable workplace stress in the bud.

Desert Island Discs references

Desert Island Discs: Yvonne Brewster 01/04/2005

Desert Island Discs: Christopher Hazlewood 29/05/2020

Desert Island Discs: Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu 04/06/2020

Desert Island Discs: Dame Sally Davies 02/08/2019

Pastoral care in modern workplaces (AI-generated)

Then I asked AI the question, How could the lack of pastoral care be addressed in modern workplaces?

That's an excellent question that extends beyond the scope of blog editing, but I'm happy to explore it with you.

Based on the themes in your blog post, here are some thoughts on addressing the lack of pastoral care in modern workplaces:

Structural Changes

Mentorship programmes - Formalising what once happened organically. Assigning senior staff to genuinely know and support junior colleagues, not just tick boxes. The consultant who postponed Dame Sally Davies' interview demonstrated this perfectly.

Protected time - Managers need designated time for pastoral duties, separate from productivity targets. When middle management is stretched thin, human connection becomes the first casualty.

Smaller teams - The anonymity you described, where junior doctors don't even know their consultants' names, suggests units have grown too large for meaningful relationships to form naturally.

Cultural Shifts

Redefining success - Measuring managers not just on outputs, but on staff retention, development, and wellbeing. What gets measured gets valued.

Slowing down - The consultant who made tea instead of rushing to the interview understood that five minutes of humanity can change someone's trajectory. Modern workplaces resist this pause.

Accountability for promises - Your point about managers using unfulfillable promises to lure talent speaks to a deeper dishonesty. Holding leaders accountable for what they commit to would restore some trust.

Individual Actions

Modelling care - Even without systemic change, individuals can choose to be that consultant. Remembering names, checking in genuinely, postponing the interview when someone clearly needs a moment.

Choosing environments wisely - Your conclusion about self-respect guiding people towards greener pastures is crucial. Sometimes the best response to uncaring systems is to leave them.

What aspects of pastoral care do you think are most critical in your own experience?

A realisation of poorly availing oneself of support systems

The after-cancer misconceptions

There is one blessing of effective recuperation that allows many to perceive one's apparent return to normalcy in most activities, suggests the illness suffered was not that serious.

Let me put it back in context, when I received a diagnosis leading to a prognosis almost 16 years ago, my consultant clearly stated in uncertain terms that if I could not tolerate the treatment, which was chemotherapy, I had probably 5 weeks to live.

In that state, I had already lost a quarter of my normal body weight, and I was in literally unmanageable pain, because I did not tolerate morphine that well.

My left foot was seething with fungating tumours, with two of my toes, the largest and the next about to fall off. However, because I was blogging through the experience, some people thought I was just having a bed rest.

Once again, I appreciate many may have no concept of what cancer is, and how it affects, the spirit, the mind, and more evidently, the body. It is a nasty malfunction in the body that in many cases leads to death. This is not to exaggerate the effect of cancer, but it should not be brushed away with indifference, because one has survived and is thriving after a cancer diagnosis.

It is a serious disease

For those of us fortunate to come out at the other end, to tell our stories, we are no better than those who succumbed to the disease. In my view, it is the medical personnel that battles cancer bringing the body of knowledge acquired from treating cancer to bear on our ailing bodies.

It is the same with my second encounter with cancer, I felt quite different because it was invisible and painless, yet deadly. It was blood tests that informed the need for an MRI scan and then a biopsy of my prostate gland showed cancerous cells for which the consultant recommended immediate active treatment.

This was not a mild headache needing an analgesic, every treatment was radical and impactful with sometimes debilitating and lingering side effects.

Nine months after I completed radiotherapy, my normal voice is in the forgotten past, urinary and bowel issues persist, night-time insomnia upsets my sleeping patterns that certain days at work find little verve or strength to perform in the afternoons.

Reviewing the support systems

Much as I tried to manage my return to work with the support of experts, by sheer personality and will, I fear I might have exerted myself to the extent that leaves me wondering if I have poorly managed things. My sense of independence tends to dispense of the reliance on support systems long before I have fully benefited from what it all has to offer.

Certain motivations have given way to lethargy, the mix of the political leading the technical in my workplace can exacerbate stress.

What I must avoid at all costs is a relapse and I do not think I am doing enough as both the cancer support nurse consultant and occupational health specialist have notified me of their intention to close my file, as I have recently not leant on them for support in the last couple of months.

From a medical standpoint, I have not been discharged by the oncologist or the urologist, their schedule is to monitor my situation for another two years.

One would think these support systems should run in tandem, but that does not seem to be the case. My response to them would offer thanks and express my concerns.

As for me, each day is a blessing, and things would only get better. I have promised myself; I would rather be able than be a person with disabilities due to my circumstances, but I should do that in view of the limitations borne by my condition.

Photons on the Prostate - III

He’s just independent

Three things greeted my concern after a rather uncomfortable weekend, the quick onset of fatigue, sudden events of feverish bouts, the ongoing lack of appetite, and the obvious loss of my natural voice that seemed to suggest that I had a cold or sore throat, however, it was one sign of labouring through the fatigue.

If I had not had my ear bent enough through the weekend by lover, friend, colleague, and neighbour about my reticence to ask for help. I am generally independent; they say I am stubborn. Some condemned the idea that I was boarding public transportation to and from the hospital.

Rather than fight these battles, I relented and by that ceded control with the unfamiliarity that a control freak might find impossible, I am not a control freak, I just like things to be ordered as a creature of punctuality and habit.

From drive to driven

My neighbour dropped things she needed to do this afternoon to drive me to the hospital and stay the whole time before bringing me back home for tea at hers. Bless her.

My older friendly steward colleague from church gave me a ride back home from church on Sunday, putting one foot in front of another to get to church had totally exhausted me. I sat through most of the service on a day I would normally have been a steward. Everyone was considerate, kind, empathetic and reassuring, it helped.

Arriving at the hospital with just about 5 minutes to spare before my scheduled appointment, it is unimaginable how heavy the traffic was on the main or back roads, it wasn’t 4:00 PM and we were in essentially rush-hour traffic, a 21-minute drive easily extending into more than 40 minutes.

Appointments are just indicators

I booked into my suite, but there was a wait, an emergency radiotherapy session for someone bedridden and then another who was having his first session attending with his wife and soon I went to collect my neighbour from the main waiting room to the suite waiting area. It soon filled up with patients of all descriptions.

Time ticked away and it was literally an hour after my scheduled appointment that I was called with the first requirement being, please visit the toilet and do whatever you can. It was a team of men operating the suite as I regaled them with the history of Elekta, I guess even when I try not to be, I end up being a nerd, all the same.

Zap and dap

Again, to spare my blushes as I pulled down my trousers to reveal tattoos and crown jewels, they had a covering ready to which I retorted, that they had seen all sorts, I was not in the least bothered. They worked like a flight crew in setting me up in the bed, reciting and confirming measurements and settings before we had the first whirl of the linear accelerator and then I was left for the machine to do its deed.

They then referred me to a reviewing nurse who took me into an office, it was soon that I realised why her voice was a bit different, she had a voice box, obviously someone who had had radical surgery on her throat. She was efficient as she meticulously recorded all the side effects and symptoms, she gave the advice to take in more fluids and try to defeat the issue of not eating enough.

And so we go

My temperature and blood pressure were taken and there is the possibility after further review that they might do some blood tests. I still have not found out the updated PSA and testosterone results of over two weeks ago. I wonder where they are held as they have not communicated to my doctor.

That’s three done, my steward colleague from the church is picking me up tomorrow morning for my next appointment. It might be later in the week before I have a schedule that favours a late appointment. Meanwhile, there is a bit more timbre in my voice, it is probably something between a shock to the system and an adjustment to the treatment.

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - IV

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - II

Blog - Men's things

Photons on the Prostate - II

Buses and stresses

As I prepared for my rescheduled second course of radiotherapy, as it was later in the day I could get other things done. I had reckoned I should schedule an hour before the appointment for preparation and travel to get to my appointment on time, which might need a review.

On a bus journey that is normally 29 minutes, I alighted from the bus 50 minutes after I boarded it, rush hour traffic amongst other issues. I hate getting so worked up going to the hospital, even the thought of arriving late affects my blood pressure, thankfully, that is not being measured for radiotherapy.

Suited for the suite

On arrival, I was passed from one reception to another, the one that manages the suite where radiotherapy is delivered. They give you another day’s appointment, each visit so that you have 5 in hand.

The radiographer came out to ask if I had done the micro-enema, which I had done at home as the Shit-on-Demand thing was just not working with me. However, to fulfil all righteousness, I went to the toilet and managed to empty my bladder.

When I was called into the suite, the standard formalities of confirming who I am ensued, these were the same radiographers I had seen the day before, and the music playing was Otis Redding’s Sitting on the dock of the bay, as I pulled down my trousers and lay on the hard bed to be positioned for alignment with the green laser beams.

Zap and dap

A few adjustments later, they left me in the room to remotely set off the imaging before targeting the photon beam. In the waiting room, I saw two commemorations of donors of equipment to the radiotherapy department. The kit used to deliver radiotherapy was the Elekta Synergy linear accelerator, first launched in 2002. [Elekta: Important Turns in the history of the company 1994-2005][Radiology Oncology Systems: Elekta Linear Accelerators* Comparison Chart]

It does everything you need it to do and from a table of comparisons, it is a workhorse with very few cons. Within 15 minutes, the deed was done, and I was dressing up to return home.

I had a takeaway last night, but I am still struggling with my appetite for food, I am not fatigued but feel lethargic, and I might need some help around the house. I hope tomorrow, I have the strength to steward at the Cathedral, that’s 2 down and 18 to go. Monday for the next, I might steal a sip of sparkling water before the end of today.

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - III

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - I

Blog - Men's things

Thought Picnic: From overloaded to overcoming

Body in overload

Having been back from Cape Town for just over a week, it has been unsettling without the clear ability to concentrate on anything so functionally productive. For the last two nights in South Africa, I took time away for just myself, much as I have a quest for lasting and exciting companionship, I am quite essentially an introvert, desperately in need of just my own company and my own space, I love the outer quiet that allows the robust debates in my head to engage quite vigorously, almost to exhaustion.

Back at home, without due consideration for the change in environment and weather, I took my second COVID vaccine booster (the fourth jab), the next day. They did not have the Pfizer/BioNTech Comirnaty product on offer which I had for the first two vaccines and the booster, but I was offered the Moderna Spikevax instead, and it is based on the same mRNA technology.

Questions on disorder

As I am in a vulnerable cohort, I will on the advice of my supervising medical personnel take whatever protections are offered, I do not have the requisite medical knowledge to make far-reaching decisions that can be quite impactful on my health and wellbeing, I would rather ask questions demanding satisfactory and convincing answers than unilaterally exclude myself from the purview of medical management.

I think both factors; the change in weather and the booster exacerbated a feeling of discomfort and unease, along with some weakness and tiredness. Much as I exercised will over capability, there was much I was not doing, including getting back to my walking exercises. To heap on that distress, my house sitter had rearranged my home, with things not being where I would have had a mental note of leaving them and other things not being in the order or way they should be left.

Patterns of mindfulness

I try to convince myself that I can handle a bit of chaos or bring some order to things, but it is more upsetting to realise that deliberate disorder has been introduced to a space that is usually exclusively yours. It might well be that I find myself somewhere on the autistic spectrum that once the patterns I expect to observe have been distorted, I am deep into stress management and countermeasures.

At one time, I could not find what I was looking for it had been secreted away somewhere else, I just went to bed trying not to bother myself until they were found the next day. Later, when I could not find the power adapter to one of the laptops, I could not be bothered with asking, I just ordered another and held off until the next day again, what I wanted to do.

Funnily, it is at these times that could trigger a mental breakdown in others that I just want some peace around me, refusing to socialise even when it can be beneficial, because I just want to be alone with my thoughts or go to sleep and let all the turmoil resolve itself in the subconscious.

Completing all material

It might seem quirky too that the rest of the material for the Microsoft test I passed two weeks ago that I could never have done in time for taking the test on the Microsoft Learn website needed going through. I completed the full curriculum on Monday and Tuesday over almost 20 hours. I had the feeling, that just because I had passed the test did not mean I should abandon the material. I did the same for the test I passed in early June.

I think over the next few days, I would get back to myself to be more full of what I like to do, I am taking each day at a time, thankful for all the blessings and goodwill that surround me.

I do miss Brian, he is everything that exudes the joy and fun I enjoy in a person as much as he can infuriate and frustrate, you learn to manage these things in a relationship, and for all the apparent togetherness I portray, I am just as imperfect, hoping to be a better man and lover – it is a work in progress.

I am a dreamer and my dreams have come truer and better than I ever could dare to imagine, it comes to a point that I am sometimes afraid to live in the reality of extraordinary dreams coming true, for that I might just need some help because there are exciting lives to live and stories to tell.

Thought Picnic: The futility in trying to rearrange me

Keep it in perspective

Let me consider the anticipation and excitement greeting some situation that has been considered the whole year but been hamstrung by the heavy pall of the pandemic along with the nationalistic restrictions imposed taking little cognisance of the fact that we need a globally concerted and integrated effort to arrest the hold of the Coronavirus.

Along the way, nerves are getting frazzled even as the default posture is to avoid any agitation as much as possible, from near and afar, as you channel issues that should best be resolved in the propinquity of the participants and principals rather than then seeking external counsel and intervention to no better end than to blindside you into taking sides.

Minimalist to my strength

It is a constant refrain, if not a battle to not get involved if possible and to be as minimally light-touch as possible. To have an effect rather than directly affect calls on insight and wisdom, maybe it is just self-preservation, it is all part of keeping one’s sanity in the midst of much turmoil.

Blog - Thought Picnic: I am best at my own speed

To some, I can be so easily upset when it is not so much the singular events but the compounding of different things, dissatisfaction, angst, anxiety, cravings, temptations, desires, the unfulfilled, the unexpected, little mistakes, annoyances, obstinacy and stubbornness against predicted outcomes, the irksome things are myriad and caught in the web of one’s existence that it might if allowed snuff out any pleasure.

Just as I am, is fine

It takes a different kind of awareness to not be drawn into the little and inconsequential that might result in inadvertent consequences begetting ruefulness and regret. What I choose to ignore sometimes is just for my safety and not out of slight, I cherish my peace of mind, my own company, and quite importantly, my own space. That I have to explain this can be frustrating and infuriating.

Anyway, I do what I have to do and along with hoping that the prayer of serenity is fulfilled in every circumstance, I am faced with, to know what I can change, what I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference.

Then, for as long as I can remember, too many have wanted to change me into what they think I should be rather than accepting that my uniqueness and individuality has their own expression that could be allowed to flourish for them to see me as the best I could ever be, along with my humanity, my flaws, my weaknesses and my somewhat incomprehensible tics.

Back II Eden from stress to recovery

From intensity to recovery

After I updated my smartwatch, there were two additional features that I found interesting the Stress assessor and after my walking exercises depending on the intensity based on the heart rate, the estimated full recovery time. These are readings I did not have before and without that knowledge, you probably do not know when to pace yourself, when to take some rest, or when to stop.

I find that this might also apply to my blogging. I could be quite prolific with writing, but there are times when you have put out so much, you are so totally vulnerable and exhausted from the depth of feeling and expression that has come out in words, you need to pause, reflect, and consider what direction you want to take after.

Easy does it nicely

That I did not feel compelled to just tap away at my keyboard in the last two days was good, I did not have to do anything even if there were earwigs of blogs percolating in my head and incubating in my mind. I am under no duress apart whatever stress I place myself under. You can let things flow just naturally, unbothered and unperturbed, then return at your convenience to address other issues.

There is so much happening and many things that have not found the form of words that would help the conveyance of purpose, context, and intent. Each day is a story told of love and life. Like the words of a song that wafted into my consciousness like the jingling of tubular bells to the gentle breeze in the middle of the day, “Let’s get back to Eden, live on top of the world.”

Thought Picnic: It's not the end of my world

Yes, it happens to us all

I have had my share of adversity, disappointment, tribulation, worry and despondency, those experiences have become part of my life.

Some of these events just happened to me, others as a result of injustices I have never been able to right and I must not forget the things I have brought upon myself through my daring or my plain foolishness.

I have my weaknesses and where I have not been able to compensate for them, I have borne the burden in a sense of dignity and acceptance, refusing to condemn myself in the many things that I have allowed.

Be human, then exceed it

That I have felt shocked, hurt, belittled, beaten, disrespected, shamed or even disgraced is beside the point, I have allowed just enough time to expend the emotion necessary to reaffirm the fact that I am human and then found ways to reflect, recoup, readjust and rejuvenate myself.

I am thankful that perspective comes quickly before the nasty takes root. Much as I cannot suddenly switch off from the fact that my pride has been battered and my ego bruised, I can begin to climb out of the well of despair and chart my course away from that rotten milestone.

Start off again

Looking for something positively enlivening to do, I flush out of my memory for the moment, that thing that apparently brought me down and leap ahead.

The opportunity once lost can be regained, after a temporary setback; the stress creating issue needn’t be stressful if I decide to extricate myself from the situation; the loss I suffered is just the loss of things, things can be replaced; plans can be rethought, ideas can be reviewed, life can be refreshed – there is happiness out there waiting to be worn with the fun, the glee and the gaiety of childhood expressed on a sunny day in wonderland playground.

It is at that point that I realise two important things about life’s many disappointments and harbingers of sadness that first, it is not the end of the world and then, it is not the end of my world.

Thought Picnic: Learn to play again

To work and to play

“They who don’t know how to work, don’t know how to play.” These were the words of the renowned educationist, Dr Tai Solarin.

The truth in this is too evident, yet, many fail to see the significance of this statement and its meaning towards wellbeing and happiness in life.

He worked to the end

I remember a cartoon of I saw early when I started contracting in 1995, a man appeared at the heaven’s gates and all the hosts of heaven were rejoicing and the record innings of age he had put in on earth and that number had not been recorded since close to the beginning of time.

In his confusion, at the fanfare, he asked Apostle Paul, why all the jollity and ululation, to which the apostle answered, “We totted up all your contracting hours and that gave you an age of 140 years when you died.” The reality on earth was that the man had died at 36, but he had worked all hours for the highest reward he could get with overtime and much else until one day he expired from exhaustion.

He probably thought he knew how to work, but he never learnt to play, it is possible he had opined that play could come at a much later time when all the work was done. Sadly, he never got to play.

Break away to hold sway

This is a story that is probably told in many lives, people who have become slaves of work and enemies of play and fun, having failed to develop a work-life balance then sadly reap a bad harvest of poor health, failing relationships, depression and possibly early death. It out not to be so.

We need to make time for our minds and lives to escape the rat race, get off the treadmill of routine and let a sense of the carefree take hold so that laughter, enjoyment and fun can tease out the child in us. It is not escapist, in fact, it is renewing, rejuvenation, refreshing and re-equipping us for new goals and purpose, and it brings meaning to life and the joy of living.

Bad examples are lessons too

Too many times, I have watched people of my parents’ generation go on annual leave and they simply plough themselves in other strenuous activity that they are neither resting nor relaxing. On returning to work, they are like they need another holiday, yet they carry on bringing stress and blood pressure issues into their lives because that have not learnt the art of play in their quest to maintain the aloofness of their status in the family and community, it is a shame.

We their children are not learning new lessons either, the many living in Diaspora who choose to take their holidays in Nigeria just heap on themselves additional strain and in their delusions they assume they are achieving something, not really.

Make time for play

Life is more than work and whatever the success of a workaholic is, one should hope that it does not end up being in vain, they having made themselves seemingly indispensable, then find that life dispenses of them in quick despatch.

When I first started contracting, I gave a lot of attention to my rest periods, it was such that I only worked 40 to 42 weeks a year and found time to enjoy the finer things in life. With time, I never allowed anyone to usurp my time, I had a life outside work and responsibilities for my rest period.

Even when I had the generous remuneration of double-rates for overtime and triple-rates for weekends, I spent that time for myself, money is not everything, much as money can do a lot of things.

Rediscover your sense of fun

I learnt the need and benefit of a work-life balance and most importantly I learnt that when any job was beginning to have an adverse effect on my wellbeing, it was time to walk away and recover than stay there and expire.

Take time off and spent it doing exciting, adventurous and wild things, find time to rediscover the joy of living and never lose your sense of fun, renew your youth with experiences that take you places to discover beauty, wonder, intrigue, mystique and magic. Find time to dream and feel free to live it.

Know how to work and know how to play.

Though Picnic: I could have died out of foolishness

I’m done with this

Just about 10 years ago, after an expletive laden meeting where my manager displayed a level of unreasonableness I had never ever encountered in all my working life, I decided I was done with that job.

I walked out of that meeting and put myself on the job market, within a week I had an offer and I submitted my resignation letter.

To spite me, he said, he was expecting my resignation and that anyone could do my job, with that he started a campaign of undermining me and frustrating my efforts at a smooth exit. It took writing a letter to the senior management to get him off my back and stop his calumnious activity.

Why this stress?

I loved my job but I could not work under the circumstances I was made to work, especially by the time we got to that rotten meeting. Of all the managers I have ever worked for in my 28-year career, he takes the prize for the worst ever sociopathic person I ever had to call a manager, I have avoided every prospect of ever meeting him again since I walked out of that job.

However, before I got to write that letter to senior management, I found myself under pressure, extremely stressed, having sleepless nights and seemingly out of control of the situation.

Wake up to reality

I came to myself one day wondering how it could be that I was moving on to another job, about to return to school for a postgraduate degree, just returned from a two-week holiday and yet be at a point where my health was threatened by conditions at work. It was so bad that I took a week off sick just trying to get it together.

That situation was unnecessary, untenable and unreasonable, it was the point where I decided no job was worth dying for and that if I could not control the circumstances in which I found myself, the very least I could do for my sanity was to leave.

Sadly for Komla Dumor

Which brings me to the very sad story of the passing of Komla Dumor in January 2014. I have for long wanted to write about this, but felt the issue was almost too raw to tackle at that time, I did however post some tweets on the broader issue of personal welfare at work.

Komla Dumor was a distinguished, accomplished journalist and presenter who worked for the BBC, it was always a pleasure to watch the programmes he anchored. A few days ago, a friend on Twitter remembered him, and opined that he would have been packing his bags to travel to Brazil to cover the World Cup, alas, that was not to be.

BBC World News – Focus on Africa - Komla Dumor profile

An unfortunate backstory

A few days after his death from a cardiac arrest at the age of 41, some stories emerged about the stress and the racism Komla suffered at the BBC. Worse still were the palpable warning signs his body was giving him that he apparently put to one side until it culminated in his death.

The New Statesman - Did stress and racism at BBC push Komla over?

Ever the professional, Komla did not once show the problems he was having as he appeared on television, yet this issue was eating away at his very being that it is rather unfortunate that he never got to walk away from it, for his health, his welfare and his well-being.

What the story in The New Statesman revealed was that Komla Dumor collapsed in a BBC studio and almost suffered a stroke 7 months before his death, which should have been the loudest ringing alarm bells to him to slow down, to rethink, to review, to reconsider or probably to resign.

The situation and warning signs

In a message he purportedly sent to a friend, he wrote of his high blood pressure, long hours at work; especially for a man with a young family, he was exhausted, aching, mentally and emotionally drained and all this seemed to be related to – ‘having “to endure lots of jealousy driven vicious insults, backstabbing from petty people” at the BBC.’

How did Komla Dumor deal with this? In his own words, “I kept going, I smiled for the camera, I volunteered for extra shifts, I showed respect to my colleagues from directors to the security guards … I remain silent in my personal strife and misery. I kept smiling and pushing on to present better and to engage with my audience and increase my following, long days and frustrating times, but I kept going.”

Only one thing is evident from that last two paragraphs, this job was killing him and what did he do? He threw himself more into it hoping it would fight for his validation, his respect, his survival, his recognition and more.

At what cost?

There is no doubt that his boss, the head of television recognised what a star performer Komla Dumor was, as “he said Komla we have decided to make you the anchor presenter for our coverage of the World Cup in Brazil.” That was not to be, Komla died in January, and the World Cup starts in 4 days’ time.

Maybe for not talking about what he was experiencing, he never got the therapy and needed support necessary to stabilise his health and save his life.

The salutary lesson is best left unspoken, to have to write of the death of someone younger, but there is much to learn from this about any situation with regards to what fights you should fight and the ones you should walk away from, not out of cowardice or weakness but out of knowing exactly what your body is saying to you and for self-preservation.

Beyond this, is not ignoring the symptoms, the circumstances and the burdens that accompany the dynamics at work where your health could be at risk. The fear of loss of status and livelihood when the loss of health and possibly the loss of life is impending is one to face boldly, for with life and health is the hope to face another day and challenge.

I was a fool

I look back at my own situation just five years ago too when for a year of observation from the chef de reception where I went for holidays in Gran Canaria, he noticed that it appeared my health was failing, yet I ignored all the issues, bounding along as if I had no care in the world.

I was more tired, sometimes particularly weak whilst the blotches that appeared on the soles of my feet, I dismissed as athlete’s foot that never healed. I then had shingles and soon that disappeared without any long-term postherpetic neuralgia, I hoped for a miracle cure that never came before I succumbed to the last resort of medicine, a resort that I should have taken probably over 12 months before. By the way, Javier, the chef de reception, predeceased me and he was younger.

I was dying

When I was finally diagnosed, I had just 5 weeks to live, if I did not respond to treatment. It was a kind of foolishness that was part of my cultural exposure in Nigeria where we never talked about how we felt whilst we prayed fervently visiting faith healers hoping for instant Shamanist cures after some ritual of the mind and the body – I could have died, it was that close.

Blog - A primer on cancer and chemotherapy – Explaining my diagnosis and treatment

In the process, I lost everything I hoped to keep through not addressing an existential health issue; my status, my job, my home of 10 years, my viability for the market, things I had acquired over 20 years given away without any return of value, it took me rock bottom, but I still had my life and my hopes.

Well…

It has been difficult, but the experience has become a story, one told in many blogs, and whilst I would never want to relive the experience, I do not regret that what I have learnt would probably make me a better man.

Do not play with your health, and no job is worth losing your health or your life for.

Words describing an interesting week

Complicated, a simple thing made more complex for reasons you are yet to understand.

Clarity, a state of having an understanding about why.

Confidence, a state of being emboldened to do something right.

Confusion, the absence of clarity exacerbating a lack of confidence.

Chaos, when clarity, confidence and confusion are leaning in the opposite direction of everything you want to do, that is really complicated.

Calm, when you walk away.

Character, when you return to bring calm to the confusion and calm by seeking clarity and acting on that understanding with new confidence by simplifying the complicated.

Concise, writing about a long week in retrospect.

Thought Picnic: Push Right Back

Review, reassess

To a head they have come, the issues which should give you sleepless nights and having you losing your head along with others, but calm must reign.

The desire for order in the maelstrom of chaotic trickle-down requirements with no form or structure can be as distracting as it is confusing that you can easily lose the plot.

Order is possible when you can arrest the agenda and make your own. We have been pawns for too long in a political game of pressures that others have taken on and desire so earnestly to offload on us.

Push right back

We have to push back with reality and realism, adjusting what can be realised with the real truths of the situation. Honest and frank and let the chips fall where they may, but what should be known would be known.

There is no point enduring pressures of fantasies that the reality cannot accomplish. It is the precursor for stress and worse. We have become the dogs keeping the thieves away from the gates when we should have had dogs doing that for us whilst we slept soundly indoors.

What needs to be done will get done, it would only take a little while longer, and when it is done, we can be sure it would do what it supposed to do. Projects just need to get a sweet long dose of stark reality – Pretty Damn Quick.

Thought Picnic: And At The End of the First Week

Logjam of blogs

It is one of those weeks where you find that many events that require some commentary have been left to bunch up into an almost insurmountable task. Yet, the thoughts of what to do would continue to percolate in the mind until the time is right.

At least, that is how I feel, for there is a blog I think I should write about workplace stress and another which was inspired by the terrifying horror of the human trafficking business in Nigeria.

The horror alone

The latter written with palpable graphic detail challenges issues of values, priorities, culture, traditions, money and a system that exacerbates the atrocious abuse and heinous murder of others without any sense of restraint.

For now, please read Tobore Ovuorie’s ordeal as published in the Premium Times, a four-part series on Human Trafficking and realise that we have bigger problems in Nigeria than the distractions that regularly exploit our religiosity so unconscionably.

Article - INVESTIGATION: Inside Nigeria’s Ruthless Human Trafficking Mafia

An avoidable death

On workplace stress, I posted a number of tweets in relation to the unfortunate demise of television presenter after whose demise we learnt of serious health issues quite indicative in West Africans, hypertension, stress and heart disease.

It would appear the warning signs were clear enough to make serious life, lifestyle and work-life adjustments but the young man pressed on, taking on the pressures and struggles until his heart gave up – it is a very sad tale and it serves as indicator to many of us – know when to walk away, know when to walk away with your life and whatever you have left of it. That is for another blog.

Getting into the flow

My week at work was interesting, an extensive learning and adjustment process as we bonded in my team and got to appreciate better the task we have ahead of us.

Whilst I have many ideas whirling around in my head, I have to curb my exuberance and enthusiasm, because there are reasons why things are the way they are, yet, there are even bigger persuasive reasons why things need to be looked at from a different perspective. It is early days yet.

The bed-hopping has started again, I am already in my third hotel in a week, and it would probably take a few more weeks before I finally find a place I can settle down in and live.

A good start

In the first week however, our mobile phones, laptops and basic accounts have been sorted out, we have an induction on Monday and that would presage the creation of privileged access to certain areas but actual and virtual.

I would say, it was a good week and with this blog out of the way, I can begin to work on the others, soon.

Thank you to everyone who helped ensure this week went well, I owe you more than I have ever given my heartfelt gratitude for. Bless you all.

Thought Picnic: If you lived my life, what will you do?

A typical ethereal tiff

I woke up this morning from an altogether strange but not unusual dream, which involved a shouting match with my mother where I bluntly told her she was not invited to my funeral.

Shocking as this might seem, too many unresolved conflicts between my parents and I play themselves out in my dreams with a regularity that has become the norm, though this vision was a bit scarier by reason of the fact that I could see myself wasting away, everyone seemingly aware that a certain time was drawing near.

Changes for a new perspective

Now, I am under no illusions about my health, it is as fine as it can be but after cancer, there are no assurances of tomorrow but the day you are in to make the best of what you have, whilst you have it and enjoy life.

The transfer of my medical care is also underway from the Netherlands through a brief stint in Wales to London where a battery of tests have been conducted but I will not be any wiser of the results until my appointment next week, I will be meeting my new consultant and we will be having a chat as to what the bloods have to say this time.

Bloods away

I walked into the hospital and within minutes the phlebotomist called me in, asked for my date of birth and turning to the keyboard punched in some information to retrieve data indicating what other tests need to be run, I took the opportunity to step on the weighing scales, I have not lost much, I think, probably 4kg and that is not due to any strenuous exercise.

I gave 4 vials of blood and then I asked to speak to someone about psychological and social support. We sometimes forget that beyond addressing physical health after a life-threatening disease, there are serious adjustment issues that follow requiring a more professional angle than positive thinking, stoicism and a stiff upper lip, believe me, I have got lots of those three, but one needs to know when to ask for help – it is not a sign of weakness, it is just an expression of deep humanity.

Don’t worry about it

A nurse I spoke to almost 2 months ago came out to chat to me asking about the help I needed, I told her about my seeking new employment, my pending homelessness – well that is not for another week and other concerns.

I say concerns, not worries because I have learnt over times of almost debilitating adversity that worry solves nothing, it holds no magic wand of sudden change to the prevailing circumstances, rather it opens wide the doors for stress and that opens wider gates to other more serious health problems – I know I’ve had my share of those, I need no new ones – thank you.

No, I am not worried, I could be anxious but I cannot dwell on that, what I do is consider what new useful advice I can get and keep my chin up, as every day presents itself both as a struggle and as a victory, life could be better but it is not bad.

Miscellaneous matters

As if to read my mind, the nurse observing my furrowed brow despite the beaming smile was intimated of the fact that I have not really been eating well, not for the lack of an appetite but for other reasons. In short order, I will be seeing a psychologist, then a support network and finally my new medical consultant.

She has assured me that if all those meetings fail to address the prevailing and long term issues, whatever they are doing to help their patients would have to be up for review.

If…

As to whether I am suicidal, you have got to be kidding, I love life and I live it to the full, when I have plenty and when I have nothing.

One small matter of getting nourishment beckons but choices desert me. Here’s to life and here’s to joy, even when it seems there is nothing to celebrate, there is much to celebrate still.

I sometimes wonder, if another one lived my life in the realities I have experienced, what will they do? I will like to hear their story, I might just be doing something wrong.

Childhood: Atọ̀ọlé

A part of my childhood

Atọ̀ọlé I heard it many times, fingers in a direction that looked like I was being pointed out. It was not a jeering though a song could be made of it.

The shame that encompassed you because you had done something wrong, maybe not normal, maybe lazy, maybe stupid, dare say heinous.

You could not make your bed in the morning without someone coming to check what you might have covered up. The rising tide of compounds of ammonium assailing your olfactory organs, all day long, but not the guarantee of a cooling on a hot night.

Earlier meals and no fluids, the sleight of hand, the deprivations inflicted by those who thought punishments and scolding would help, in my little mind; it simply aggravated the anxiety, the fear, the tortuous expectations of rebuke – did they also feel an inadequacy amidst my shame?

Did my parents help?

My thumb-sucking sister suffered no less at the abnormality of our foibles, good parenting should probably come with manuals and best practices – the keyword being understanding what your kids might be going through expressed in seeming anti-social behaviour.

For years, it was my problem and no one else’s, maybe now there is knowledge of the psychological travails of an Atọ̀ọlé, why one would become an Atọ̀ọlé in some places and not at others.

Months of staying away from home at 10 were a break from my role, I was the principal in my play, I said all the lines and was the spectacle of a few if not the envy of others. A pause from the gardening at home was punctuated by a visit from dad.

He invited me to stay at his swanky hotel and asked if I still did it – going from the evidence of almost 4 months, I didn’t but that night I did again.

It continued exceptionally

What could it be? Why was it happening? Apparently, there was no medication for it and therapy was the hope that I would grow out it. It was probably another 3 years before it seemed that I had ditched the role of Atòólé.

Before then, as I started secondary school, there were 3 of us who seemed to have our bedding subjected to the scorching livelihood of sun-dried tomatoes – the tropical heat serving as the drain for waters that should have been given elsewhere.

Mattresses like beached whales starved of the comfort of their beds; thankfully, beyond the punishment of shame and the put-down, no one exerted corporal punishment for it.

No definite answers

Now we know, Nocturnal Enuresis [1] (NE) to put a glossy medical term on a subject so personal put me in the 5 percentile, a delayed developmental issue that could have been due to stress, sexual abuse and other unexplained matters at home and amongst my family. Going through stages of Primary Nocturnal Enuresis and Secondary Nocturnal Enuresis, it might even be genetic, perish the thought that my parents ever heard Atọ̀ọlé shouted in their direction.

If I did have a child whilst I would hate to see them inflicted with the Atọ̀ọlé moniker, I would hope that I would be considerate, understanding and helpful in helping them through what could be as traumatic and very shameful without having anyone to turn to in time of great childhood need.

Yes, I have a history, I was a bedwetter and the endearing term for that in Yoruba was Atọ̀ọlé.

Sources

[1] Nocturnal enuresis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia