‘Doctor without glasses’

The month has come to an end and everybody is giving himself a treat and you are there saying if you get enough money, you would enjoy. There is nothing like enough nmoney o. however small, enjoy a percentage by giving yourself a treat like eating jollof mixed with okro soup and wele in inside the tin. Eat well and stop that ‘kontonmire gives blood’ highlife song.

It’s a poverty song put on our lips; manual cars are more luxurious than automatic cars, really? You see the ideas poverty can give you? These are the consolation songs poverty can use to play tricks on our minds. Who cares if eating pizza once in a while gives cholesterol! All are songs of poverty talk! In the second week of the month, the long queues at Adabraka and Osu for gari and beans have created shorter or no queues at fried rice joints all because the purchasing power around the second week of the month is on low battery. People will not say it o; they would prefer to say fried rice gives cholesterol. We know already! Don’t mind me o, that’s just a decoy to cover up dry pockets!

I hope you know that nowadays the commonest suspect anytime one reports an eye problem to the eye specialist is glaucoma! Looks like apolo is in the air, or? My daughter’s eyes started itching with some discharges similar to apolo two weeks ago. I called my medical doctor friend, for advice. Professional as he has always been, his advice was for me to send her to the nearest hospital for proper diagnosis.

Indeed, after she had been given some eye drops, it improved for only 3 days and resurfaced. Quite worried, I called my friend again and told him I would hate the situation where my daughter may be made to wear spectacles as young as she is even though I myself started wearing glasses only a few years ago though I often see clearer when I take it off – the irony of an Ayigbeman like me using lens! These my hometown people like to do the opposites of things. My cousin, Bright is still writing remedials! He always failed Mathematics to the extent even last year that he didn’t register to write it at all, results still came and your guess is as good as mine – ‘F’! Bright? Hmmm! He is a veteran in failing and has a masters degree in it.

Yeso, where was I? Ahan, Doctor then referred me to James 1:2 in the Bible in a paraphrase that I should consider myself fortunate if my daughter has to wear glasses at an early age and that it would be a sign of good omen. How? He explained, in jest, that haven’t I noticed that most children especially girls who wear glasses in their formative years are super good in the sciences and eventually become medical doctors? Somehow, I agreed with him because anytime I go to the hospital to see a doctor and he or she is not wearing glasses, I feel some kan way! A medical doctor without spectacles, is that one too a doctor? Ah!

I have been wondering how one can successfully pass the following medical subjects if he or she doesn’t wear glasses early in life. Just see: hygiene toxicology, nucleosynthesis, otolaryngology, ophthalmic specialty, human anatomy, histology (as for this one even me I can pass because it sounds like History), embryology, pathogenic orgasm or is it pathogenic organism, pathophysiology, pathology, forensic medicine, pharmacognosy, neurology, molecular biology, paediatrics, dermatology and venereology! Ebei! Abeg, don’t worry when your child has an eye problem now and has to wear glasses – he or she would become a medical doctor or a scientist, all things being equal!

I am still wondering why someone will spend seven years at the university to study how to remove a decayed tooth. Even boxers and trotro mates can do that in a few bouts. Just wondering o, I am not saying eyi! When we were in school, girls especially who wore glasses were assumed to be science-bias and were very intelligent but I had one class mate at Anunmle Primary School. Grace? Chai! She wore glasses and looked very serious but academically, puin! I still wonder which hospital prescribed those glasses for her!

I don’t know why but I used to fear girls who were science-bias especially those in the pure and / physical or engineering sciences.

Women in the sciences are quite common nowadays even those without glasses! I still remember that lady in my MBA class over a decade ago who could tell a whole Quantitative Professor that the question he had set on the board is wrong all because of her background as a first degree holder in civil engineering. Me? How am I supposed to tell a wrong quantitative question from the right one? I was only looking at them (she and the Professor) like that buuuuuuu without understanding anything!

Anyway it still amazes me that almost all medical laboratories that one would visit in town nowadays to do malaria tests give NEGATIVE results even though all the symptoms point to malaria. What’s happening? Is malaria no longer in Ghana or the lab equipment and re-agents can no longer recognize the parasites? Ahh! Test after test, yet the results are constantly NEGATIVE.

Nothing annoys me more than the ‘ashorrla’ they do at the lab for these tests. The same way the mosquitoes suck our blood is the same way the lab guys do it. So who is guiltier of malaria offences – the one who sucks with the motive of giving malaria or the one who sucks to see that motive crystalise and gets a negative result?

After checking for malaria which I can prophesy would prove negative, they would now ask you to go and do blood sugar, blood pepper, blood ginger tests and ‘whine whine’ tests! Why?

Many of us go to the hospital having fore-knowledge of the disease. ‘Doc, I am sure I have malaria; just give me coartem and I will be fine’. Me, I do this many times too just to avoid being asked to go to the lab especially if it has to be that test that I dread so much to know my ‘status on wassap’! That test that gives you sleepless nights till you get the final results! Kai! After all, man must die of something!

I hate going to the hospitals bcos of injections that is the reason I abuse some Over The Counter or ‘draw’ store’ medications many of which have side effects which can create serious problems for my liver! Liver problems are damn serious o, people!

Don’t be careful o, yoo! When diagnosed, that is when you would realize that every single second of good health is a lot of money! Go on drinking ‘bitters’ without urinating and take painkillers by ‘hat’!

Me sef but for the fact that they sacked me from the medical school bcos I didn’t like seeing blood, I would have been a Gynaecologist by now. It’s the only medical specialty that pays you twice your salary…one in cash and the other one, in kind…free show and licence to see and touch with or without spectacles!

Have a great weekend and remember weekends are for funerals and weddings. I would choose to attend a funeral of old people rather than a wedding though. This resolution was made after I realized I had to attend Kofi’s weddings 3 times.

Kofi alone o, 3! He didn’t know that in marriage, a man needs to have two hearts – one that will absorb things that are absurd and the other heart is for breathing. How many years do we have on earth that every time, it is only Kofi who has a problem with his spouse and keeps jumping from one marriage to another and ending it so quickly too? Kofi no get heart! We all have problems o, yooo!