Clinical Notes

History in bodily detail

A 4-page printout from my local clinic this morning details a two-year medical history drawing in information from London, Wrexham and Amsterdam about observations, diagnoses, prophylaxes and treatments for a condition that is in its 15^th year.

Reading through, I am somewhat amazed at the ability of the human body to face the onslaught of infirmity and find recovery in help from medication, the state of mind and just sheer good fortune, to which I can only say, I have been blessed.

Under pressure to be at ease

Whilst away on a course yesterday, I received a call from my clinic to visit for a bicep cuff encounter with a sphygmomanometer. Yes, when I was last at the consultant’s just over two weeks ago, my blood pressure readings were a matter of great concern.

We agreed for an appointment for this morning and I walked up to the clinic just a little over 250 metres away. Observing the lady who went in, in front of me, she did not stop at the reception but touched a device where she entered her gender and date of birth to be informed about who she would be seeing and where to wait.

It is all now electronic, so I touched the device, entered my details and when the name of the nurse came up, I cross-referenced with a chart to the left of the device on a noticeboard that told me I should wait on the 1^st floor.

Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing

Just under 10 minutes later, I was called into a waiting room where my blood pressure was taken twice, with the second reading much lower than the first and both readings considered normal. However, I was told if there was any indication of abnormal blood pressure, I could be put on a 24-hour monitor to gauge what my blood pressure is on a typical day.

We discussed my meeting with the consultant two weeks ago, the suggestion of prophylaxis for pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) which was decided against without a consecutive blood test with similar indicators, I was told I needn’t worry about it. My drug regime might be changed in 6 months because the drug is now out of patent and there are more affordable variations of it, though I am not under any obligation to change them if I don’t want to.

In all, it was pleasant and I was back home within 30 minutes of leaving, looking forward to a more eventful day. Despite the many problems the NHS has, I owe a lot to the NHS for my health and wellbeing; long may that continue.

Thought Picnic: Victuals that feed the few

Inspired by this opinion piece by in Kay Musonda in ModernGhana titled, African Pentecostalism Has Given Birth To A New Breed Of Mentally Lazy Christians Who See God As A Rewarder Of Mediocrity, I contrived this ditty, emphasis on contrived.

Victuals that feed no one.

In the pursuit of the spiritual,
We have lost the individual,
As priests have taken the scriptural,
Made it into a begging ritual,
There is, therefore, no rigour of the intellectual,
For temples now inhabit the spectacle of the visual,
Therein we hone the instinctual,
From what was of the perpetual,
The clergy gains from the conceptual,
The laity left lazily ineffectual.

Thought Picnic: Between flawed diamonds and flawless pebbles

The battle for the perfect

“Leave your mind alone; your intuition knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way.” Ray Bradbury.

Intuition as Google defines it “is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.”

It goes without saying that in the realm of blogging, conscious reasoning is the enemy of the instinct to just write and allow the flow of whatever urge to write there is. There are times when I just begin to type at my keyboard or write in my notepad things that are just there to write.

Before I get enough of that spring of words into unstoppable traction, my mind interjects and interrupts, fearful of what arrangement or words might emanate and stemming the flow by channelling what was in freeform into the processing of thoughts and views, becoming the gamekeeper of expression.

The fearful interloper

Yes, my mind almost always gets in the way and at that time, it is almost impossible to politely ask it to move out of the way and allow free rein to what is innately there to express.

Intuition in writing can be your internal madness, a madness with a veneer of genius or even stupidity, you can never really know. If you can find a place to just scream, it is surprising what release it can be, jettisoning all inhibitions and letting ripping without abandon.

It is not thoughtlessness, per se, practice over time does create an inclination to do things literally subconsciously or even unconsciously. Taking away the impediments of the conscious might well be the panacea to the dreaded plague of Writer’s Block where we burden ourselves beyond our expression with what reception and assessment would be.

When Voltaire in his moral poem La Bégueule (French) wrote,

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien,
Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

(In his writings, a wise Italian
says that the best is the enemy of good.)

I do not believe what he intended was to make do with the imperfect, but that we should allow what naturally comes to be itself without adjustment or embellishment. Sometimes, the inspired or the natural is ruined by intervention.

"Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without." Confucius

Thinking of Feyike - My sister, my daughter

My sister, my daughter

When I bought my apartment in November 2001, my youngest sister was the sole beneficiary, her name appeared on all the forms even though she was never aware of that fact.

She was for me not only my youngest sister but as there was a 17-year gap between us, there are ways in which I considered her my daughter too. Yet, I was like an absent father to a daughter I knew I had but never bonded with.

When she was born, she arrived home on the day I was leaving for school, I did not attend her naming ceremony and for that my father and I got into a physical where he head-butted me out of rage because I did not rise to expected familial responsibilities.

Away and unaware

I had left home at 10 for boarding school and the time I spent at home after that was for holidays apart from the 16^th year when I was a student at the Lagos State Polytechnic before I moved to Yaba College of Technology in late 1982.

In many ways, I was unaware of what was going on at home, siblings fell seriously ill, some were admitted to hospital, another had an operation, I was oblivious of everything and only heard after the event whenever either of my parents deployed an accusatory put down to gain some leverage, I was a problem teenager who got them annoyed about most of what I did.

In hurt and blame

After I left Nigeria, in snippets of conversation I would hear of my sister’s condition, her undulating health status and the complaint that she was not giving enough consideration to her health. That was confirmed when I was able to obtain a full diagnosis from the doctors after her health deteriorated rapidly in mid-2015.

I had begun to mourn my sister and my daughter from that point, not out of resignation but in understanding the gravity of the diagnosis and the prognosis. I still hold the view that in a way my mother bears some responsibility for the way things turned out. We have not spoken and we probably would never speak because of this.

Respecting her choices

From the moment I was acquainted with the situation, I did communicate with my sister through other means apart from speech. It appeared some decisions were being made on her behalf that she was not happy to follow, she did not want a kidney transplant even though that would have given her respite and there was a time she suggested moving abroad to continue her education, giving her the opportunity to have better medical treatment.

At a time when she appeared despondent, I shared my own story about how I lost everything after cancer and invariably that included what she would have been a beneficiary of. I respected her being adamant about the choices she wanted for herself. Then when I was told that she was beginning to think of dying, I resigned myself to honouring that decision and so a few weeks after that she died.

For a memorial beyond the memories

My brother and third sister made the burial arrangements and she was committed to earth that same day somewhere far from home and unmarked. Tradition dictates difficult accommodations for grief, for she was survived by her parents and many older siblings.

A few days ago, I asked if a tombstone was being put over her grave, the response I received broke my heart, and at the point, I knew I had not even begun to grieve the passing of my sister. I do not think I understand or appreciate the gravity of the loss and this is from a distance in all ramifications compared to people saw her everyday, as her health declined and life slowly ebbed out of her tormented body.

I took the day off work and returned the next day pre-occupying myself back into work to weather the loss without pausing to emote and reflect. I busied myself to take my thoughts off it and have not given myself the time to consider until I started writing this blog.

I think of my mortality too, times when I wonder if I would be discovered before the maggots have had their wicked feast on my remains. Yet, even if there is nothing after death that I could either do or feel, I would like something to exist as a token of remembrance that I passed through this world noticed for more than a day. I would like that for my sister too because we never said goodbye and after she had gone, I did die a little.

Erratum:

My first sister and her church members made the burial arrangements, I did read that my third sister bathed her body and they all were pall-bearers at the end. As the blog read, I only so much about what is going on in my family.

Why Do I Blog Again?

The ‘Why do I blog?’ Question

Every once in a while, I find myself writing one of those “Why do I blog?” pieces. Sometimes, there is no particular answer to that question, when I consider the times I have written the silliest stuff and found that someone else can relate to the silliness.

It simply means no life or life story is insignificant, we all have stories to tell and we restrain ourselves from telling those stories because we over-analyse the interest, the import, the humour, the readability or our ability. The simplest stories are sometimes the most impactful to the reader.

Then again, in my 14^th year of blogging, I can assure you that blogging is not easy, it is difficult, it can be inconsistent especially if you set goals for blogging and most of the time, there is no inspiration or drive to write anything, for days, for weeks, though rarely ever months.

The way you feel

I have written many times before that blogs are the way you see things, how you are affected and possibly what your opinions are. By the time you’ve written a sentence for each of those points, you already have a blog. The framework or skeleton of a blog is a blog, you don’t have to stress yourself about it.

I did not start blogging to gain popularity, notoriety or recognition, I just blogged because I have an active mind, lots of thoughts, many thoughts crazier than you can ever imagine and out of my love for expression. That I have garnered any readership of my blog is just fortunate and I am grateful for that.

It’s about moments

I am not a professional blogger and my activity on other social media platforms as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram do not substitute for the rich expression in blogging. Blogs are more manageable. I would go as far as to say that you may rarely get the inspiration to blog, do not depend on it as the impetus to write. Blogging grows out of moments and if you live the moment and cherish the moments, you will always have something to write about, your perspective of things.

Life is full of moments and that is what is unique to every individual, each moment is a story mostly untold. In some cases, all I have done is to begin to write or type, the thoughts become the words that become the blog. I wrote this in the waiting room of a clinic this morning.

The masterpiece of self-expression

The length of a blog is immaterial, some blogs are long and others short, there is an art to expression and the canvas we are offered to express ourselves is broad and free, if we dare to wield the brushstrokes daubing the canvas with colour, we might end up with a masterpiece – live dangerously.

Why do I blog? I blog because my life is full of moments, some forgettable, many memorable and in all, the moments are journaled into what has become a 14-year catalogue of what is essentially an ordinary life.

Everyone is a blogger, you have moments, those moments are stories, stories that need telling. Start telling your own story in your own words. Start blogging.

Why do I blog? Over the years.

Blog - Tardy as it goes (January 2004) Written after a month of blogging.

Blog - Blogging for my own pleasure (July 2006)

Blog - Still learning to write blogs (January 2010)

Blog - My Own Blog Writing Rules (May 2011)

Blog - Thought Picnic: Losing the might to fight (write) (March 2012)

Blog - Blogging: Facing the shame of my bad writing (September 2013)

Blog - Blogging: Why You Should Blog (October 2013)

Blog - Thought Picnic: Finding purpose in the therapy of my blogs (November 2013)

Blog - The Gift (January 2014)

Blog - Thought Picnic: On why we should all blog (September 2014)

Blog - Thought Picnic: And more graffiti with punctuation (September 2014)

Blog - Thought Picnic: I write to please myself (July 2015)

Blog - Why do they read this blog? (November 2015)

The waiting room

What is there to hate?
For all the time we had to wait,
It’s not like we were late,
For what wasn’t really a date,
A walk-in centre at any rate,
Yet over four hours at the gate,
Flustered and ready to berate,
One man’s anger I had to deflate,
For he was beginning to grate,
Without a cue or a queue to abate,
And though I was not feeling great,
We all chose to relate,
Then I was three down from eight,
Before I knew my fate.

Thought Picnic: Taking the animal out of the workplace

The jungle at work

In a working career that is in its 30^th year, I have only twice encountered a situation where the one bestowed the privilege of leadership has been no less a member of the fraternity of the silverback gorilla in the jungle.

It is as if every concept of leading men was taken out of the management guide of Tarzan in his element. They having mastered the jargon and act of obfuscation where the multitude of words suggests the vacuity of purpose, everyone enduring the onslaught of bullshit laid out by the trowel.

Courtesy always matters

In some instances, I have considered myself probably too old-fashioned for certain environments from the surfeit of expletives in the speech to the lack of basic manners in address and conversation, the act of communication might well be served with grunts, growls, barks and quacks.

I have seen better in the animal kingdom in terms of social development and grooming, like who sits beside you on the train or on an aeroplane, you can’t choose the class, breeding or comportment of most of the colleagues you would end up working with.

In the main, even the difficult ones for whatever reason I always found accommodation for and cultivated the means of creating mutual respect which has developed into a friendship. I like to think I am quite easy to get along with. Courtesy matters to me and it is completely in my manner, nature and rearing to be courteous.

Of rotten disrespect

What I cannot stand and abide is indifference and disrespect, especially from those I need to work with daily. Situations where requirements, goals and deliverables that are primarily my function to provide filtering down to me via the grapevine rather than communication and where such attitudes when challenged do not elicit a positive response. A case of persons impervious adaptation within a diverse environment or maybe they cannot handle diversity at all.

Such was the situation that one has had to face in those two situations, animus and uncouth behaviour caught within the metaphor of a rocking horse, much activity, many meetings, idiotic jargon and unnecessary stress borne of being belittled and patronised as if your sojourn in that setting is the pinnacle of your career achievements.

We are first human

The workplace is where people come to work, but primarily the people are human beings, from all backgrounds too diverse to list but amenable to the vagaries of good business conduct. The have feelings, families, lives and much more. When you take away the fundamentals of humanity in your dealings with your colleagues at work, you create tension leading to the untenable.

The absence of the human touch regardless of your inadequacies, prejudices and even ineptitude, leaves one with no other option than to walk and there comes a time when a man has too much self-respect to be treated with disrespect.