Wheeled about

Unlike when I went in on Wednesday to try out my orthopaedic shoes at the hospital, yesterday, I did a lot better, it was neither tiring nor stressful.

The appointment yesterday was to see the chief consultant in charge of my treatment, as a leading authority, he is in such high demand, short notice appointments are almost impossible.

One other reason why my visit was not tiring was because I had a friend chaperone me which meant I did not have to win the determination race of the movement on crutches and the perspiration that so easily knocks you out. I use chaperone in the broadest possible sense when really I was escorted.

In fact, the reason the chaperone was useful was because, I could then be pushed around in a wheelchair. The wheelchairs provided at the hospital are not big-wheeled that would allow you to self-propel, so help is needed and my chaperone was ever so helpful.

Hospital pressure vs. Home pressure

Eventually, my time came up after my blood pressure was taken which read 119/78, I really have to ditch my portable blood pressure meter. You get these devices to use at home and they are just way off the mark, the number of times it has indicated I was pre-hypertensive to the point that my thinking was aligning to a lie are too numerous to mention – these home devices might be indicators but are best at the disposal of the hypochondriac in need of an excuse to see the doctor.

They lack precision and do not necessarily put you in the know, beyond a simple set of bathroom scales; any other device is best left to the specialist and the specialist tools.

Nurse wanted to be sure I could stand on the scales to see if I was gaining weight, I thought I was losing weight at home but on the scales in hospital, I seemed to have gained something – probably because of my heavy soled right foot shoe – I am not complaining lest I be threatened with hospital fare again.

All looking really good

The consultant wheeled me into his office and asked how I was feeling and we ended up in the pedantry of the difference between fine and a lot better – generally, one would say one was feeling fine which meant one was feeling well, but in an international setting rudimentary exactness is required.

So compared to when he last saw me, I was considerably better by all accounts; I was surprised to see that unlike the rounds he makes with many doctors, these consultations were made alone.

We went through how I was responding to treatment and the markers showing that a lot had improved, I also got a lot more information about the diagnosis and what indicators get checked as part of the treatment regime.

I was well informed, always engaged and allowed opinions that his expert views helped clarify, debunk or affirm. I had one complaint of a serious irritation that started just a few days before leaving hospital and was concerned that my pain management drugs did not feel as effective as the exposed fresh tissue after the removal of necrotic tissue meant more sensitive surface areas of pain.

New tool to the pain

Thankfully, I knew how to bandage up my foot and had taken all the stuff required to bandage it up again, I took off the bandages for him to observe the foot and he thought there was great progress in the healing, most especially now, the dryness. There was this banter about the dry wound management and the moist wound management camps where changing from the latter to the former offered great improvements in my case.

A few prescriptions were ordered and reorders were posted the ones I already had with a face-to-face appointment set for 3 months hence, meanwhile, we would have a telephone conference in 3 weeks.

The ante has been upped for pain management to using a fentanyl patch which is quite good for cancer pain but has very strong narcotic properties. In fact, I got a phone call from my pharmacist this morning to warn about the interactions with one other medication I was on.

The patch to be applied to the skin over 72 hours releases 12.5 micrograms of the active agent per hour, after about 12 hours, I cannot say I am feeling the full effects yet, but one does have to be careful – this is now serious pain management, no more your over-the-counter pain remedy.

After seeing my consultant, I got a big box of chocolates and went up to say hello to the nurses on B.06, there were 2 on duty that I recognised fully by name. It was nice to see them, the priest however was not in his office and when we returned home, we ordered a Chinese takeaway.

Off the foot for a shoe in

The whole tiring event of today was contained in a hospital visit. Whilst I was yet in hospital it was suggested that a special shoe be constructed for my foot.

It was considered a difficult task because the lesions under my sole were at or close to the weight-bearing parts of my foot.

How you displace the weight in such way that each step was not an earthquake of stabbing pain would call on the genius of these specialist orthopaedic cobblers.

Appointed m’lady

So, this visit which could not be merged with other planned visits to the hospital, I was there to try out my half a pair of Jimmy Choo’s, Manolo Blahnik, you have no patch on these footwear.

First, the receptionist said I had no appointment but was quick enough to realise her mistake before I took the ante to the next octave, this was set 5 weeks hence and still this was not for my bespoke shoe - in all, this conception to acquisition will take 7 weeks, I can get a bespoke suit done in Asia in 24 hours.

When the shoe was finally presented, it was like a low-heeled pump/boot and the inlay of wood, silicone and some padding that would blend better with Caucasian skin.

It was fitted and there were parts marked out for modification and improvement, meanwhile, my foot had seen enough rough handling to start crying out with pain.

The beauty of the shoe

My sole had changed a bit since the first analysis, a greater surface area of skin had already become necrotised than the original lesion areas, these bits of skin when pulled back expose fresh red skin that would form the basis of new sole skin, but as it heals the surface nerves are so sensitive and are active transmitters of pain, I have to ask if there are better pain management regimes I can use.

This bizarre construct of a shoe might require that I have a heel added to my normal right-foot shoe, methinks, this shoe would not have long to travel and you cannot imagine the cost of this sandal pretending to be a boot when it was only mustered the admiration of a slipper.

At least, if you are going to make a special shoe try a bit of beauty – is that too much to ask, do the sick have to be seriously made up to look very sick indeed? I have a separate appointment next week to pick them up.

I am ready to forgive

My heart had melted, so I sent this short message in the hope of a reply.

“I hope this message meets you in good health and spirits. I am sorry that I cut all contact with you. I let go of all the hurt I selfishly held on to, I hope I can find forgiveness with you too. Be at peace and God bless you always.”

I signed off and waited.

A tall handsome Englishman in whose company I felt I had all the friendship and company I needed but it was never really fulfilled.

We would talk at length about so many things, he was not of great means but when it came to his case even I never had a head to think through what I was doing, I spared no expense, my heart always had the better of me and I never really came up trumps.

But each time we did get to meet up, it was just pure fun if I could engage his attention long enough before he wanted to do other things.

A worthy son

2006 was a most difficult year for him, his mother who had kicked him out of their home when he was 15 died in his arms in his home drawing all the comfort she could from a son she had so desperately wronged – he buried her like a good son and honoured her greatly as his mother, I have never been so proud of Chris as he conducted himself in this solemn and grief-stricken period.

As the year closed, his father also passed away and though he had so many older half-brothers, all were too absorbed with the will; it was Chris, the once rejected son that the father could trust with his estate and testament. Chris became the man amongst men, burying his father like a worthy son.

The irony of life that the son once disowned in his youth was the only one they could in their heart of hearts rely on to do well and do right – life can be so mysterious when viewed through the collapsed lenses of time.

He had a sense of duty and a great survival streak that did not necessarily reach down to the affairs of the heart for companionship and deep friendship but the company for me was just so pleasant.

I was having enough

Probably, the last straw for me was when I could not even get him to attend his own birthday dinner at one of the swankiest restaurants in London last year.

What expletive did I not rain on him, even he reeled at the quality of my language and I was surprised the vehemence of it all, but I really had it. Only 4 months before, I had invited him for the winter sun in Gran Canaria because the year past was quite an ordeal for him, even the clock had not struck the midnight of the new year before I was boredom and other things were fun.

And one really does wonder how despite all else, one can be infatuated in the quest for simple friendship – some matters just defy logic just as this completely defied my sense of proportion.

For another brief moment

Communication was soon reestablished, he had difficult times, I had a listening ear and a few comforting words, being distant, there was no prospect of arms getting involved in the comfort but a friend I wanted to remain.

It came to a head again and this time, nothing he sent to me got a reply, for through August, there was a text message asking after my health, my work and many more things, I ignored them all.

But he was always in my thoughts and that lead to the text message I sent just last night.

Gone to where they never return

The reply came this afternoon and it read:

“Hi! This is Chris’ flat mate. I am really sorry to tell you but Chris died of kidney failure two weeks ago. It was very sudden and he wasn’t in pain.”

I last saw him out of the corner of my eye almost two years ago walking up the road in the winter sun towards the shops, we did not attempt to engage each other.

I liked him a lot and now he is no more; I am left with memories congealed on 4 days of 2003, 3 days of 2006 and 2 days of 2008, a friendship of almost 7 years where we met for only 9 days.

My dear friend, my dear Chris, was 36, he had beaten even cancer in his 20s; I will miss your humour, your smile, your stubbornness and the hurt that so easily accompanied our friendship; good bye and rest in perfect peace, the peace of God be with your tender departed soul.

Originally written for NigeriansTalk.org as Lawmakers deliberate on the completely absurd.

No respect for the lawmaker

Sometimes I wonder why deliberations between lawmakers never get accorded any recognition of sophistication, erudition or plain sense.

It somehow never even gets to the level of a marketplace brawl in the heat of the day, the brutish entertainment of professional wrestling seems to have more decorum and order in its proceedings and eventual result – it is no wonder people might better watch a wrestling match than politicians politicking and preening themselves in self-absorbed discourse under the pretense of being representatives of some constituency.

That is the worrisome aspect of this line of thought, the fact that lawmakers are not seen in any good light and they then have the power to enact laws and legislation that affects our lives and livelihoods, it goes without saying that we need a better class of person first then better levels of deliberation.

A topic ready for debate

I have been reading comments to a news story in the good fatherland of Nigeria where lawmakers have deliberated the absurd, it is incredible that we end up with such representatives; these people do seriously believe they have raised serious concerns and their deliberations rather than being ridiculous are legitimate discourse.

The nEXt online newspaper carried and article with the headline Lawmakers ask robbers to declare temporary ceasefire [1], a headline like that should garner enough curiosity and interest, it did mine.

Nigeria is currently hosting the Under-17 Football World Cup, a competition that was almost pulled last year because the government could not see its obligation to follow through a commitment to host, the self-same government that is seeking a permanent seat on the UN Security Council – such is the myopia that plagues our leadership.

Appealing to the patriotism of bandits

Ogun State has one of the venues, so the lawmakers met up and first lamented that a particular location – Isheri Bridge on the border of Lagos and Ogun States had become a den of bandits.

Anyone would think once a hotspot for crime has been identified, you empower, equip and instruct the law enforcement agencies to sort it out and have a report at some future date as to how it was done and what else they need to be more effective at crime-fighting.

These politicians had a different line of thinking that could only be expressed verbatim, “there is a need for the men of the underworld to suspend their operations in the interim, because of the on-going mundial.”

Yes, our lawmakers were asking armed robbers to have a ceasefire, they should suspend their criminal activities to bolster and participate in the window dressing rebranding of Nigeria as a peaceful, crimeless and safe country.

Indeed, it is good to appeal to everyone’s sense of patriotism at a time like this, but this takes the absurd to another level crass stupidity, you cannot imagine anything worse can come after that appeal.

At the mercy of criminals

Well, it got worse, because the lawmaker went on to say, “Then they can resume thereafter, because there is nowhere in the world where robbers and robberies could be stopped from their work.”

One comment read, if this were a drama sketch, it would be unbelievable, the lines would be struck out, but this really happened, those words were spoken by an elected representative that had willfully suspended every iota of intellect.

In one sentence, they threw in the towel to crime, left us at the mercy of criminals and in that defeatist thinking equated robbery to some sort of gainful pursuit or employment.

Robbers and robberies do get stopped and many do end up being nabbed by the long arm of the law if law enforcement is given the tools, responsibility and confidence to do their job. However, this lawmaker and the chamber in which his remarks received shameless hearing and debate have undermined ever establishment and institution that might at one time have been able to combat this menace with all vigour and win.

So feeble, so delusional

To rub salt in insult into injury, he concluded his plea for support with, “If foreigners witness the robbers' attacks at this point, it would send a bad signal to other nations.” In my view, nothing could be worse than having this debate where the lawmakers have put us at the mercy and goodwill of men of the underworld and given the police no particular impetus to make order, safety and security prevail.

Then the Speaker of the House feebly suggested, “I want to use the opportunity to call on the police to intensify efforts in checkmating criminals. They should please not relent in the efforts.” How the police are expected to win the war on crime where the chess analogy leaves them so powerless as pawns and the armed robbers are all elevated to queens escapes me.

Much more hot air of words but no backbone or force of parliament to arrest an untenable situation; all this constituted a debate in a house of assembly.

Scanning through the comments left, it is clear that the Nigerian populace with an opinion are less than impressed by this and attribute this to the rot that has made politics an unpalatable mix of the nastiest people holding the reigns of power but completely clueless as to what being in power represents.

It is no wonder that they cannot even get a local government official to appear before them.

The danger is that this kind of deliberation is probably not an exception, but the norm in many other state assemblies, providing for chaos, drift and misgovernment – Nigerians need to talk about this kind of representation and deliberation, it should never become commonplace.

Source

[1] 234Next.com | Lawmakers ask robbers to declare temporary ceasefire

A time to be forgotten

There was a time when this was a mere Mr., who had been given the title of Head of Department in a fledgling college of science and technology that was the sin bin for all who could not get into a more prestigious higher institution that year, the year was 1981.

I am of the opinion that the rate of attrition was high after the first year when the higher percentage of students made it into other schools that made you proud to say you were now amongst the learning and becoming one of the learned.

Lagos State College of Science and Technology was just that, I spent more time playing Scrabble and Chess than being in class where the perfunctory lecturer marked time nonchalantly; in one chemical engineering class the lecturer used German names for the compounds – this was a suburb in Lagos not Dusseldorf.

He was just Mister

The only course that seemed to be up to anything worthwhile was the architecture class where modeling took up all their time, all our practical engineering classes were conducted at the better equipped and famous Yaba College of Technology.

Within this melee of listless students and happy-go-lucky lecturers; young, handsome and bestowed with titles by reason of their being available rather than being all that capable was a Mr. Gbenga Daniel; things are a lot different now.

The difference is exemplified in an episode that happened in a church two Sundays ago [1] and it reads as both interesting and deplorable.

The once Mr. Gbenga Daniel is now Otunba Gbenga Daniel, a 2^nd term executive governor of Ogun State in Western Nigeria, who by the time he was running for governor literally had a chieftaincy title in every city, village, hamlet and hut in Ogun State, I counted 53 then.

Prayer for harmony or discord

At a church thanksgiving after the marriage of the Lisa (Prime Minister to the King) of Egbaland's daughter, Chief Bisi Macgregor (Probably of Scottish Descent), the pastor at the Redeemed Church of God, Peculiar People’s Parish, Onikolobo, Abeokuta had just finished praying “that God should intercede immediately in the crisis in the state and engender the return of peace and harmony.”

Now the ruling political party of Nigeria is a cesspit of garrulous uncouth egos in interminable conflict and discord, Ogun State simply mirrors the chaos of misgovernment, anarchy and the hell that the ill-disciplined and categorically reprobate party represents.

It would appear the Executive Governor has not been able to bring the order of mechanical engineering which was his specialty to the affairs of state, querulous factions abound and every public opportunity they find is used to up the ante to the most despicable conduct with reckless abandon.

No sooner than the pastor had finished his prayer of conciliation, the Executive Governor who enjoys some elements of constitutional immunity and wields great power seized the microphone from pastor and proceeded to negate the prayer of the pastor by raining curses on his supposed enemies to the chagrin of the families of the newlywed couple who were in church for entirely different business than this political calumny.

The burden of patronage

But then, you should expect this because the Nigerian society is so patronage, nepotism and influence-peddling driven, important but rather obnoxious people have to be invited to your functions lest they get slighted and you end up in the crosshairs of their villainy. In any case, the family of the Lisa of Egbaland would have acquired a pall of shame and well, that is par for the course considering the bridegroom’s family is of another tribe.

The audacity and effrontery that allowed the governor to think it was right and proper to disrupt an august occasion for his own ends in a church is breathtaking but Nigerian politicians would put themselves above God in the quest for recognition if they could; hubris, pride and megalomania is personified in these people with characteristics that brought the downfall of Lucifer of old.

Be titled or un-entitled

Beyond that, it was interesting to read about the entourage of the governor, he himself as Otunba (Right-arm of the king) in many towns, then his wife who has the title of Yeye (King-mother), had Akogun (War logistician), Are (War general), Aremo (High Chief of war), Prince, Architect, Comrade along with the common Chief.

These are supposed to be leaders of society in Ogun State, respectable, honourable, demurred, cultured, agreeable, virtuous, patient, honest, longsuffering and diligent in fostering peace, harmony and community spirit – I am deluded, I think.

Woe betide anyone who bears rudimentary address of Mr., Mrs., Miss or Ms. In fact, I am now of the opinion that being plain Mr. in Nigeria might just show you have either not yet been contaminated by the system or you cannot afford to pay to be awarded a chieftaincy of a hamlet in some non-descript forest where people wear no clothes.

More curses rained

Having seeded that church with commotion, he moved on to the annual Tarborrah campmeeting of the African-Initiated Church – Aladura sect, which I once attended in 1980, where again, his enemies were subjected to the threat of God’s wrath.

To have moved so deftly from a Pentecostal church setting to an Aladura setting where apparently his father is an Archbishop is quite amazing to say the least.

Now, the question is what if his so-called enemies are praying the same prayers to assumedly the same God in their own religious settings?

Nothing would be as peacefully rewarding as to see the ground open and swallow all of them up, in the re-enactment of a dreadful Pentateuch (Mosiac books) quake so that the better people of Ogun State might just breathe a big sigh of relief and praise the Most High God.

Can we rise and pray?

Source

[1] The PM News - Nigeria’s leading evening newspaper » SHOCKING: Daniel Curses Opponents In Church