By Gbemiga Ogunleye
If like me, you have this bad habit of reading every inscription on buses or on walls, you probably would have seen this inscription on hospital walls: WE CARE; GOD HEALS!
That was what I remembered that Saturday morning in Kaduna, as I lay on the surgeon’s operating table. I silently prayed to God to take control.
Before entering the theatre, the anaesthetist had asked me what I ate that morning. I raised my eyebrows. What kind of question is this? The medical team had warned me the previous day when I went for the pre-surgery protocols not to eat anything after 10 pm . So, why are you asking me what I had eaten, I asked the anaesthecist.
“Oh, never mind, it’s a routine question,” he responded.
But let me begin the story from the beginning.
Some three weeks earlier, I had been having frequent heart burns. To make matters worse, my voice, which at the best of times was husky, was getting huskier.
At a point, it was difficult for me to hear myself.
I knew it was high time I visited an eye, nose, and throat (ENT) expert.
With my wife in tow, we visited an ENT consultant at her private clinic.
The lady, who is also a consultant at LASUTH, examined me and pronounced the verdict: “Video Laryngoscopy revealed fleshy mass arising from the right vocal chords. The left vocal chord is normal. He will require direct Laryngoscopy. ”
So, in a layman’s language, there is a growth in my right vocal chord that needs to be removed by surgery.
For a man who is comfortably sitting on the sixth floor, I told myself I wasn’t going to do a conventional surgery. I opted for a laser excision of the growth.
The problem was finding a hospital that does laser surgery on the vocal chords.
LASUTH doesn’t, LUTH doesn’t. The search then began for a hospital that does laser surgery.
I called an elderly friend in London who is an ENT surgeon on the possibility of doing the laser excision over there. When he gave me the bill, I knew that wasn’t a viable option.
He then told me that there is a very good hospital in Lekki, which he would recommend to me.
I went to Evercare in Lekki, but they, too, don’t have the facility for laser surgery.
But the female consultant who attended to me said she had heard that the facility was available in the North and that she would revert to me the next day.
She kept her word and linked me with the ENT Consultant at the Jowaco Specialist Hospital Kaduna.
Back at the operating table, many thoughts were running through my mind.
Surviving the surgery was a fifty- fifty chance.
I asked myself why I didn’t tell my creditors I was going for surgery. At least they would want me alive to be able to repay my debts. They would have invested in prayer entrepreneurs!
I stole a glance at my wife. If I didn’t come out alive, she would have to be drugged to be flown to Lagos.
My mind then went to how the newspapers would report my passage: GBEMIGA OGUNLEYE, EX NIJ PROVOST IS DEAD! GBEMIGA OGUNLEYE EX PUNCH EDITOR IS DEAD!”
Perish the thought, I told myself. Isn’t there a verse in the Bible that says: “Not my portion!”
I remembered that I had written my Will but wasn’t sure if I had filed it in the Probate registry. I consoled myself that as an Honourable poor man, there wasn’t anything really that my two children would fight over!
I remembered that I was expecting my second grandchild. So, if the surgery went awry, I would be denied the privilege of seeing the baby.
Suddenly, I remembered the Christian mantra of “it’s not my portion.”
I became emboldened and told myself as my Christian friends would say: “I shall not die but live…”
My parents in heaven would see to that. My mother, especially, wouldn’t sleep. She would ensure that her son survived the surgery.
No thanks to the anaestheticia I drifted to sleep.
My wife, who witnessed the surgery, told me it lasted for about 90 minutes, but I didn’t come around until about five hours later.
If you know the number of people who didn’t wake up after surgery, you will understand why songs of praise and Thanksgiving have been on my lips.
Indeed, the Lord is good!
Ogunleye, a lawyer, was former Editor, PUNCH and a former Provost of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Lagos