By Isa Gusau
Our boss, Governor Babagana Umara Zulum, my family and closest friends wouldn’t like what I am about to publicly reveal. I deeply apologise.
Last week, I had a surgery at Max Multi Speciality Hospital in New Delhi, India. The surgery, which doctors categorised as a ‘high risk’ was around my chest wall and lungs. It lasted some hours. It was very successful. Alhamdulillah!
Some readers, especially close friends, may now have mixed feelings: happy that the surgery went well, but disappointed that I kept them in the dark. I am sorry.
If you (reading this) also feel that way, you certainly have the right to be angry, that is, if you translate my decision to impliedly measure your importance to me.
Well, I even kept the surgery away from my children. I made sure they did not know what I was going through. I also kept it away from my brothers and sisters.
Sometimes, the best way to protect your loved ones and friends is by making them think everything is okay. You may torture and potentially harm some if they know precisely what you might be passing through.
Unless it happens beyond your control, what is really the point of deliberately making your loved ones and friends suffer from the pains of extreme imagination and mental bereavement, whereas putting them in that state would not quite change your condition?
As a journalist 12 years ago, I had a surgery for appendix and a complication from the mistake of surgeon in Abuja, kept me hospitalised for two weeks. From my hospital bed, I saw how my children – 12 years younger then, were often traumatised. I saw how my sisters in particular, brothers and close friends were sleeplessly worried.
So, this time, I decided to free them from those pains.
I must say however, that keeping people in the dark has its own downside. You potentially lose deliberate offer of prayers and well wishes. You also have to deal with people engaging you since they do not know.
From my hospital bed, I attended to office work and private issues, including financial requests.
Someone even sent me a strong message, almost calling me a wicked man for not sending him money the day he made his request. Funny enough, his request came the night before my surgery. At that time, I was undergoing a final round of mandatory tests: kidney, liver and respiratory function, Hepatitis B and C, and HIV I and 2, which are conducted on all patients undergoing surgery, for the safety of surgeons who endlessly make contact with blood in theatre.
I had about 100 tests, but negative for all dangerous diseases. Again, Alhamdulillah.
But I must admit that anticipating results from cancer tests (and this happened a number of times), was traumatising.
From the onset, I was sent for a whole body PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan. This is a nuclear diagnostic procedure that evaluates the functioning of all body organs and tissues from head to toe. It is one of the highest diagnostic machine for cancer, heart and lung diseases, gastrointestinal, endocrine, neurological disorders, and other serious conditions.
All the tests reconfirmed what I already knew before arriving in India – that I had a chronic ulcer and some fluid between my chest wall near my lungs.
The Indian doctors investigated me intensively, to rule out any dangerous cause of the fluid. This was why I had to undergo numerous investigations for all killer diseases.
From both sides of my chest, the fluid was extracted and cultured to detect any link to all kinds of dangerous diseases. All negative.
At the end, the Indian doctors concluded I needed to have a thoracic surgery which involved penetrating my chest wall to evaluate my lungs, drain the fluid and extract some tissue for biopsy. Again, the biopsy reconfirmed no link with any dangerous disease. Alhamdulillah! The fluid was from a blockage.
But how did I even find myself in India?
