by Igwe Ozioma Peace

The clock on the parlour wall chimed- one ringing bong. Could it really be two O’clock in the morning? I sat on the floor, wondering what had happened. My mum had stormed into our room, “open the gates!” had been her order, then she had zoomed out with my dad, leaving a trail of blood and a gust of dust behind.

My parents have always been playful people, joyous buddies with a great sense of humour. Perhaps that’s why we didn’t take my Dad’s back pain seriously. It was just an ache wasn’t it? A mild sensation of discomfort. Nothing too serious; or so we thought. After all, he still told us rib-cracking folktales, ate oka and ube with us, and even danced with us. Then he started complaining a bit more often, which was nothing out of the ordinary, a bit more panadol would do the magic! But when painkillers weren’t helping; my dad sought other help. A certain man kept rubbing his lower back with powdered leaves while saying a chant-calling on the “spirits of hunters” to touch his troubled bones and stop his pain. Most other helpers provided him queer concoctions-their potent trado-medical recipes just for him because he was a good man. There was even someone else who had offered to suspend him vertically, pulling his hands upward and his legs downwards in order to banish the pain, straighten his bones and possibly make him taller.

When things became unbearable, my dad decided to have a series of tests, an extensive bone scan, CT Scan, X-ray, MRI. The results of these tests came in a jumble of strange, frightening statements. My dad had a slipped disc, acute degenerational changes had occurred in his lumbo-sacral vertebrae. There was disc herniation, nerve compression, all too close to his spinal cord. In addition, his prostate had also been absorbing dye which suggested prostate cancer.

My mum had stormed into our room on the night after his prostrate biopsy. Somehow, the doctor had forgotten to catheterise him and so he was passing large clots of blood and bleeding profusely. That night, they drove back to the hospital to have his catheter placed and when the biopsy results came out the next week, my Dad was confirmed to have stage 2 prostrate cancer.

With two severe medical problems, my parents began their long visits to neurologists and oncologists. Visits during which we prayed, sang, and slept without saying “Mummy Goodnight!, Daddy Goodnight!”. On a Tuesday morning, my Dad was finally scheduled to have lumbar decompression surgery. The consultant neurosurgeons made it clear; they were not making any promises, they had limited control over what would happen in the operation theatre, there was possibility of death or disability, and they wished him best of luck!

That morning, I lay on their bed sending a retinue of mindless queries to Google. Thanks to data, I looked up everything from anatomical diagrams to descriptive articles, rehabilitation manuals, surgery videos, everything. At about 5:00PM, my mum finally picked her call. ‘’he’s fine” she said. “They’ve just wheeled him out of the theatre.” The surgery lasted approximately six hours.

The days that followed were sheathed in anticipation and suspense. Surgical anaesthesia had worn off, hours had passed. It was time for him to walk again. When we called my mum, the tension in her voice was palpable. The physiotherapist had appeared for the post-surgery rehabilitation. After re-adjusting his head incline and helping him out of bed, he just could not walk. ‘’he says it’s the pain. He’s just screaming. amarozikwam, I don’t know again.”

The consultants could not explain the pain. Everything had gone well according to them. All they could do was adjust the medication regimen. His Pain relief drugs and dosages were multiplied, and then the physicians announced that treatment was over. “It happens, the severity varies, with good posture and exercise, there should be improvements”. With this verdict, it was useless staying back in the hospital. “Prepare the visitor’s room, we’ll be staying there” my mum announced over the phone.

My parents came home at about 8:00PM that night. My dad had lain on the back seat of a hired Toyota Sienna. He came out wearing just his socks without his shoes. The cab driver kept saying “Sorry Sir, Ndo, Take it easy Sir!”. While I retrieved his shoes and bags from the cab, I think my mum and aunt carried him up the stairs. As we helped him into the room, he quietly said “Pain!”. It was a heartfelt utterance. After he had eaten Wheat meal and ofe nsala that night, my mother’s sisters who were at our house came to see him. They each said “Brother sorry oh, Ndo”.

At first, my mum placed his bed pan in the master’s bedroom bathroom to see if he could walk to relieve himself but apparently, this failed for she soon relocated the bed pan to the room where my Dad stayed and even appeared to clean him up with a towel and warm water every morning. While he stayed in the visitor’s room, the trails of anguish were visible on his face. In the days that followed, he ate little and often abandoned his meals half-way due to a sharp pain on his left leg. Once the pain started, I would massage the leg with Rubb and Aboniki balm, however menthol wasn’t quite the only treatment. My father’s sister appeared with a bottle of Chinese miracle oil- a queer smelling ointment which I applied to his left leg each time the pain began. There was also olive oil, cold compress, hot compress, everything.

While I frantically massaged, my Dad would scream, “medial!” “Lateral!” and I adjusted my massage to localize pressure as he screamed out the anatomical positions where the pain was concentrated.

Once he explained, that he had been given muscle function tests after his surgery, that his hamstrings were perfectly fine, his quadriceps were okay, and  the issue was not from his soleus muscle- my dad is a doctor after all.

At other times, he went ballistic, ‘’afugom onye na-eme m ihe a!,I’ve seen the person doing this thing to me!” We all listened in perfect quiet about how he had met a certain woman at the bank, how shocked the woman had been to see him, how she was now stabbing his mid-thigh with needles in her coven, how he was sure that the pain was diabolically conjured, and how this certain woman was the cause of his predicament. At times like this, it did not matter that my doctor Dad had previously called the pain claudication, arising from nerve roots, or that the clinical manifestations were typical of Sciatica. We only listened, concurred, and prayed.

In weeks that followed, I was in Nsukka, running from GS Building to JIMBAZ, attending tutorials and eating okpa.  My Dad made painful visits to the oncologist in Abuja, underwent radiotherapy, and took generous doses of chemotherapy. Somehow, we felt seamlessly connected. I seemed to sense when his painful spasms had began, even while I was in lecture halls. Maybe it was because I had been the one tending to him all along. I even felt the same sharp pain running through my left leg sometimes and while my roommates chattered loudly every evening, I wondered how many times the pain had come in the day and how long the spasms had lasted.  At these times, I understood the weight of solitude and the sound of silence for though I rarely called him; I was closer to my Dad than I had ever been.

Ten months after his crucial lumbar decompression surgery, my dad has undergone a month of continuous radiation therapy, and many months of home-made rehabilitation. He says pressure on the pelvic floor triggers pain and tries to relieve himself as often as he can. Today, he wears a lumbar corset to correct an inclined posture he developed at some point. He is my perfect proof of the power of will in the human spirit for against all odds, he has transcended the pain and learnt to walk again. He climbs down the stairs every morning wearing his corset and a smile.

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This entry was submitted as part of the Nigerian Voices competition organized by YNaija.com.

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