Fingers on the pad. Mind on the travel. Thoughts on the roll. Here we go…
So it’s been a nice time having the opportunity to be a medical student. Or more or less being called to the art of medicine. They say the first 25 years of our lives are the formative years and the learning period of our existence where we actually develop ourselves. Here we build the basic framework of majority of what our life in essence would be about. The rest of the years we live are just to add flesh to what our early youth has laid down or to prune our lives to perfection as we move along. It is a period we cannot afford to make sub-optimal use of less we disappoint our own selves and the generations our loins will unfold.
The opportunities of life have afforded a treasure of revelation my heart yields only to share. What I call, “living with the unusual”. I cannot reiterate the simple fact that our world is a hodge-podge of untold uncertainties. Who knows tomorrow? Who can lay emphasis on the proceedings of the day ahead? We can only plan for the moments ahead and know surely we might make somethings happen but as to how they would really turn out, only the Almighty holds in entirety.
So my simple question is “what do we do when the unusual happens and we have nothing else than to live with it?” To the normal wiring of the human set, the usual is the expected, the well wished, the anticipated and the positively hoped for. When these befall us, we tend to have a great advantage to live with them. Adjusting to such wits is not a bother of much. Who would suffer adjusting to prosperity? To whom would a positive feed be a burden? A fate I wish for all.
Chance through a hospital setting and one of life’s daring uncertainties would be made more apparent. Most often on the ward I’m thrown into thinking how some patients are going to live the rest of their lives. I try comparing it to mine to see how functional I would be. How enjoyable this place we call earth would be to me? Having lived a whole life as one piece in peace and having to live the rest of my cups full with an infinite infirmity is something dreadful to my thoughts.
Many people travel through a day only to leave it with diverse indelible atrocities. Some would have to live the rest of life without a loved one – a soulmate. To others, it’s a lost appendage. How better can one be `living without one leg or a hand? By what means should they be breadwinners for themselves? Not to list if they have dependents. Some people would have to live life’s remains with unbearable pain? How uncomfortable it can be when the same thing that abhors sleep in a man is the very thing that he has to battle through. Engaged in a war which one knows they’ve already lost.
Throwing my imaginations about, I cannot draw an end to the many uncertain negatives that befall men. Maybe you can. Neither can I try imagining how life becomes worth living after such happenings. Maybe you can.
I only then sit and count how blessed I am. (Not to say that others who are disadvantaged are not blessed). If the uncertainties that have befallen me thus far have not rendered me flat footed… THEN….
TO GOD BE THE GLORY….
You would always underestimate the blessing in loosening your bowels until you lose the ability to do so –
Dr. Abiboye C. Yifieyeh. (Consultant Pediatric Surgeon, KATH)
OMB-2017
Great piece Obed.. I like the quote