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Dr. Adeniran!   If you have spoken to me for any great length, you will know that my favorite place ever to work was at the Baptist Medical Center in Ogbomosho. Popularly called Bami by the locals and BMC Ogbomosho.  I have many fond memories of my time at Ogbomosho and the reason I do, is because of Dr. Mrs. Adeniran. She was a seasoned clinician and she imparted her knowledge to us, the interns, registrars and senior registrars under her charge with great grace, joy and intention. She was a clinician I looked up to, and it was easy to see why. I have so many memories of working beside her in the medicine clinic at BMC Ogbomosho.  One of my favorite memories, is when she told a patient that he better tell me in greater detail how long he had been ill as I did not understand Yoruba. The patient kept saying ojo meta when I asked him how long he had had his symptoms. I the 'kobokobo' doctor kept thinking he truly meant 3 days (ojo meta).  Her patience revie...

Over the past few years, I have observed with much more attention, the passage of generations. I listened to the retirement speech of an old teacher of mine in medical school. She spoke about wondering why a classmate of hers in high school was bereft because her father had died in his 50s. Her own parents were in their 30s and according to her, she thought 50 was ancient. She tactlessly commented about her friends grief wondering why she was so distraught. She made us all laugh when she mentioned that now at the age of 70, she does not count herself as one of the ancients. My job brings me face to face with death on a daily basis and this has spurred me to put my house in order. I have had documents prepared for the disposal of my earthly benefits and I have appointed financial and health power of attorneys. I mention, like I mentioned in my last post to prevent the DMs that never fail to follow these posts, that I am not actively dying but I think preparing for death is as important ...

When I wrote the first three parts on death, I focused on my near-death experiences. I briefly wondered at my reaction to these happenings and the ‘lack of fear’ when these happened. I quickly realized that as my experiences where a few seconds long, the fear that accompanied those experiences generally dissipated with the joy that consumed me when I realized I was still in the land of the living. My first brush with real fear came when I worked in a refugee camp in South Sudan and people were dying in large numbers from a hepatitis E outbreak. It was where my nail-biting habit disappeared for good. Ok, it still appears in moments of extreme stress but the fear of consuming the virus broke my lifelong habit of finding solace chewing on the little stumps that I called fingers. After watching many people succumb to death and facing a mob go berserk when they thought their sister, daughter and child was going to die, I quickly realized that dying of hepatitis E was not an option and there...

  Many events over the last few years, have me wondering why I chose medicine. It is a tough job but one that I embraced with all of my heart as a new doctor. I started this blog to try and document my love for the job and I tell you, I loved pouring out my heart on the pages of the world wide web. But (I know, one does not start a sentence with a but) the last few years have been brutal. I was speaking with a colleague and friend last week about not finding joy in my job as a physician and he was in shock. He asked what I felt when a patient with a poor prognosis does well and I had to truthfully respond that I felt nothing. I only feel the loss keenly when my patient dies, but when they do well, I do not have any euphoric feelings, or feelings of accomplishment that my coming to work that day had anything to do with it. I have been missing from this blog for a few years and even when I came back 3 years ago, I did not have the strength or joy to fill its pages and I know why....

 In speaking of the events of the last two years, one major emotion that runs through me is one of anger. It has taken me many months to recognize it and even then I told myself that I was no longer angry but just upset at the turn things had taken. If you are guessing that the pandemic has something to do with my emotion, you won't be wrong but it is also something else. I had the opportunity to be a part of a new community and spent many hours during the pandemic with them. The first thing I recognized was not the warm welcoming smiles for the truth be told these were few and far in between but the one prevalent theme and one wall I walked into was the hostility and the disdain if you may of people in this community and it stunned me. It not only stunned me, but it took me to a new low. I have started at least 5 variations of this post in the past 2 years. Once or twice before the pandemic an then at least 2 times during it. I am still nowhere close to knowing anymore than I did ...

 I posted the link to my culture shock II article on various forums I belong to and I got a number of responses I would like to share here. It was interesting to note that my experience was not unique to me and even certain geographic differences existed with respect to greeting. I think one sentiment that is unique to all the comments I received was that the 'no greeting' part of the culture rankled the most. As a friend put it-  ''This is where the French differ. For them, greeting is a way of acknowledging the humanity of the next person. You cannot not acknowledge a person; it is a faux pas.'' Another friend said- "You talk and laugh with a colleague one day...the next day, you wave at them from across the walkway....and they look right past you... GEEZ!!!!.  How does one live a life without "greeting" or at least a form of acknowledgement.... I'm still not used to it....😒" Other comments: "These are things I have experienced. T...

 I first wrote about culture shock here  twelve years ago when I came as a student to the US for the very first time. And even after all this time, there are still things that shock me, even when I think I have assimilated into a culture very different from the one I was brought up in. I'll go back twelve years and then fast forward to present times. I arrived in Boston at the end of summer and thankfully got accommodation not too far from school which meant I could walk to school and did not have to commute. It also meant that I passed by people on the street every day and as a typical 'yoruba' gal greeted them with a cheery good morning. The first few times when my greeting was not acknowledged, I thought I had not greeted loud enough for me to be heard, so I changed the cadence of my voice which resulted in the exact same response- silence. It took me a while before I stopped instinctively greeting every being I passed on my way to school, but a few months later I had ad...

 O that men would praise the Lord for His mercies and for His wonderful works to the children of men.... It has been a while since I did a thanksgiving post and I will be randomly dropping them in between my 1 week scheduled posts. The reason I did this is because I have noticed that I have become complacent acknowledging my blessings. I read a post recently that stated that where we are now is where we prayed fervently at one point to be, and it reminded me of days when I had barely enough and lived at the edge, walking almost everywhere because I counted every dollar. So instead of looking ahead at what I haven't yet received, I want to take a walk back and thank God for everything He has done for me. 1. I am thankful for life. After reading my posts on Death, I bet you are thanking God with me.  2. Thankful for family. My dad is visiting for a few weeks and its been such a refreshing time of fellowship and getting to know him again. The last time I lived under his roof was ...

 Do you ever get random memories that make you cringe or blush especially when you have not remembered those things in a long time? My brain likes to take me on random trips down remembrance lane from time to time to keep me humble or should I say it likes to remind me that I am only mortal and so I am prevented from developing airs. Yesterday was one of such days. I suddenly remembered something that happened 10 years ago and of course that led me on a convoluted journey into the underworld of cringe worthy moments. My aim in sharing these moments is to spread some of the joy of being human and if I can tease a laugh from you then I'd say my day is complete. So what did I remember? An episode that started with my sister calling me frantically about her child who was ill. She has the benefit of a personal physician- me. My default mode when I think it is not a matter to be settled on the phone is to refer her to the nearest hospital I trust. Several years ago, after my youth servic...

In recounting my near misses, I can't but think of how many other misses I am unaware of. As a child, I was the only one who was hospitalized a few times compared to my siblings and cousins. I cannot remember if I ever felt sick enough to be at deaths door, but I do know I disliked getting injections. During one of my trips to the hospital I was to receive a Novalgin injection, for those of you old enough to remember Novalgin, it was the most painful torturous injection ever. I screamed hell and blue murder as the nurse approached with a Novalgin shot. 'I don't take injections', I lamented in my most piteous voice, you would think anyone with a heart would see the tears and back down but those nurses were a special breed. After a few minutes of my temporary madness, my father was summoned, it took just one look from him and I accepted the drilling of the syringe through my marrow (that was what it felt like) without as much as a squeak. The feeling Novalgin gave your bu...

I'll digress a bit before getting back to my tale. One of my patients died today, it was expected, it was obvious when we examined that the end was near and still we tried to stop the arm of death from plucking this one away from loved ones. At what point does one give up pulling back the cord of life and allow the grim reaper tug the soul to the great beyond? When do we give up the heroic efforts to restart a failing heart of a soul whose body has been ravaged by its time on earth and infiltrated with cells not designed to nurture life? Many are guided by personal experience, religious belief and a hope so strong it laughs in the face of death to decide whether to be accepting of the eventuality or wave wiry fingers at the specter that wants to bring about the separation of a loved one. As a physician, I have a fair idea of when the grim reaper or faithful servant if you please is near. One question friends and family want to know is 'How much longer?' 'When will the ...

I wrote this on the 29th of November 2018 as the 1st part of a series on my facebook page. I eventually wrote 3 parts and no matter how hard I tried to write a 4th part I never could get round to finishing it up and then the pandemic struck and I look back on this and laugh that I had no idea what death was or is. I am re-posting these here so for those of you who have read it, I apologize and hope that I'll be able to write a 4th or even a 5th part soon.  Death is often a word that brings with it a sense of panic, of doom, a feeling of such helplessness. As a child whenever I asked my mother what killed someone, her answer was always death! It was frustrating then but in reality, that is always the answer to what killed a man. 'It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.' I first read the words from Ecclesiastes as a child and I thought surely no benefit can be fo...

 When I announced I was back in the blogosphere, I imagined that I would churn out a post every week. I got myself an accountability group of fellow bloggers and managed to start two posts- one in my head and the other in the draft section of my email. What I did not contend with was the inertia that has held me bound for many months since the start of the pandemic. One question I get asked a lot is about working during the first months of the pandemic as a frontline worker in NY. To be honest, I do not like that question, it digs up memories I would rather leave buried and when somedays some memories pop up like a Jack in the box uninvited, I allow a few tears trickle down before hurriedly shutting the box. I am not sure what would happen if  the memories buried underneath the concrete in the shores of my mind pop up but I know that they are safer hidden in the oceans depths than swirling in the atmosphere around my head. The one emotion that stuck to me was fear. I did not t...

It's been 6 years since my last appearance here and a lot of water has passed under the bridge, more like a billion cubits. I have grown up,   I was grown before but trust me I have grown a lot more. I have completed a residency, chief residency and fellowship and actually moved from NY to a more idyllic less fast paced town in the Midwest in this time. The move has come with all of the culture shock that entails moving away from the North East and I have plenty to write about this. I transitioned from trains and buses to actually driving myself everywhere and recently completed a solo 7 hour drive with 3 brief stops to refuel and use the restroom. It seemed like a good idea then but several rarely used muscles showed up multiple days in a row to protest against being so abused that in concession to these muscles, any distance greater than 4 hours by road will automatically be upgraded to a flight. My regular driving distance on days when I want to escape the quiet of my town ...

 It is the little things that matter.... ... the smile you give that lights up a wane smile on a face that is covered in tubes .... the squelching down the urge to shout back at the voice shouting at you over the phone, remembering that a soft word turns away wrath. .....the patience you show when explaining why things have not gone completely as planned .......the prayer you utter for help for another day It is the little things that matter

On Ebola in Lagos! #StopEbolaNaija #FightEbola To be honest, my first palpitations occurred when I heard about the cases of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. I looked at the west African map and shuddered, wondering if the countries were far enough from Nigeria to keep it out. I had palpitations when 2 friends Gunnhildur Arnadottir and Emily Veltus sent out emails and posted fb updates to say they were headed to Sierra Leone to work at the MSF treatment center to actively treat and manage outreaches in a community hit by the virus. You can tell that I am very proud of them and a little in awe of their willingness to head out to fight this evil virus. I had palpitations last night when I saw the headlines saying a suspected case had been quarantined at a hospital in Lagos and I had further palpitations this evening when I read that the patient had died. Yesterday I called my brother in a panic and immediately reeled out the precautionary measures that need to be take...

Testing the feel of my fingers on the keyboard, Converting my taps into the written word. Testing the sight of black on white, the look of the font on the blank page. Testing the fullness of the word, against the emptiness of my heart. Testing the meaning of the words, against the meaningless void of life.

That is the first word on my 100 word list! And it's self-explanatory! So here is my thanksgiving list for the year 2013 1. Thankful for disappointments, plans that fell through, tears shed, periods of mourning, despair, frustration and whatever it was that I perceived as negative. In some strange way, I came through stronger, better able to appreciate that life is full of ups and downs, and that things that look like mountains actually are not bigger than mole mounds when you come nearer or when you put on the proper viewing glasses. So I am thankful for the many things I did not regard as blessings and for those that look nothing like blessings now :) I am still learning. 2. I am thankful for an awesome family! The older you become the more appreciative you are of the community into which you were born. I am thankful to them for the wonderful words of encouragement, the support on every side, for always being available on the other end of the line/ screen to  listen to m...