It began on Monday, November 1. The day of the retinal injection, though it was not planned that way. It was supposed to be a meeting, instead, I found myself in the surgery ward waiting, assigned a cubicle and a nurse; Mujeeba who brought some documents as if for surgery. They were consent forms, I signed, no knowledge of what I was consenting to. Okay maybe I did but it still seemed far-fetched to me. My temperature and blood pressure were checked. A covid test, just formalities. I changed into a drab grey surgery gown, a disposable blue hair net and a nose mask, was wheeled into the operating room and was attended to by the consultant. My eye was draped or whatever term it is they use to prepare an eye for a short procedure.
All this is true except the beginning, which makes it a little untrue. There are many ways to begin a story.
This story began
1. With the rustling of a fetus that may or may not have survived.
2. More than a century ago when my grandfather was born.
3. At eight, when I discovered my sight wasn’t as good as other children in Auntie Veronica’s class.
4. In JS 1 platinum when I first wore glasses, took on the name ojugo and all its attendant stereotypes
5. In Eni Njoku hostel where I stopped using them.
6. With the harmattan air in the hilly terrain of Ikorodu when my eyes watered for days nonstop and I could not control my face.
7. On the hot track, 120 metres sprint practice when my right eye went dark. Cue in a warm weekend in Ikeja to de-stress.
8. With early morning handstands because they help blood flow to the brain.
9. With the doctor’s diagnosis: Retinal detachment.
10. With teary vision and hobbling with a twisted ankle away from the hospital gates.
11. When I had to manage other people’s grief.
12. With helplessness so heavy, you just have to lie down.
13. With a scream in my head. I have been screaming since, it has not stopped.
A story is an attempt to register a space in time; and time is a deadbeat co-parent. You can fight it but it still does what it wants to do.
This is a love story, a love letter to my friends. A diary entry.
It happened again in December. A meeting with the doctor took me to the surgery ward and had me changing, being wheeled into the operating room. I was out after almost fighting the kind doctor who handled my procedure. I couldn’t breathe, I was having a panic attack on the operating table. This was the third time.
The operating theatre is very bright and white. If I was less knowledgeable, I would have compared it to a space station. The frugality of speech, of movement, of breath. Practiced routines: demurring nurses, the eager-eyed resident, the quiet &expensive looking anesthesiologist. Sometimes there was friendly banter, the doctor once complimented my body while waiting for the anesthesia to kick in.
Eye hospitals have a lot of strange contraptions. I was becoming adept at identifying these machines and their parts. The one for measuring pressure flat against your cornea. The one where you see a house over a hill of grass. The one that works with gel, a lot of gel. The OCT machine, you follow the blue dot over a red field. The one that looks like a clean pit latrine drained of water. A thing loses its ability to scare you if you treat it like a game, inquest or adventure.
Hope is the thing with feathers
I am grateful to my friend I. for my first retinal injection, I would most likely not have gotten it without his help. His family was very kind to avail themselves of their resources and goodwill. I was instructed on the proper greeting techniques to curry favour in Lagos, among many other things. My friend I. was the one who signed as my witness for the first retinal injection, in lieu of family. Maybe he has become family. One day after a terse moment with the doctor in the consulting room, we shut the door and laughed down the hallway. In his company, laughter is never far and yet the weighty things aren’t relegated to the back, not a lot can do this: flitting through melancholy, angst, jocularity and full-on madness like expert deck shufflers. Whether talking about his artistic brilliance, the devil that is American imperialism, pointing out interesting places on the road or perfect silence, I have never felt closer to hope, than in the car rides with my friend I.
I enjoy silence a little too much, my brain demands it. Maybe this is why I stuck with running; long distance or sprints, it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to talk and I could chase my thoughts round the track or around Surulere. I haven’t engaged in any physical activity since my eye issues began and I don’t understand leisure walks. I miss running a lot and when nostalgia grips me, I find myself on the track, walking and taking deep breaths, pausing to run my hands over the coarse surface, the white lines, the numbers. I would close my eyes and imagine it is 6:35 am and the air is biting and I am warming up, loping around the track, waking up my lungs and heart. Other times I find excuses to walk, past my old running routes — the church that has always been there, the orange house newly painted gray, the worn suya table by the junction, new businesses rising from the carcasses of old ones.
Silence! My brain demands it.
The dead don’t talk
The dead don’t speak and I want to remind myself that I’m here. Really here…
— Chiamaka Okike
Silence can be oppressive, a bird beating its body against a contracting cage. This is a hunger immune to music, books or any other type of activity. It forces you to reach out, make a phone call, any excuse to hear your voice, confirm that you are really there. How do you know you are not a shade wandering the Fields of Asphodel? This is a difficult thing to do these days. I have a phone working almost 24/7, several phone numbers, a few social media accounts and yet I go weeks without sustained interaction with anyone. I am not an aberration; every other person is like me. In a bid to remain plugged in, in the know and on the move, we have disconnected from ourselves, from the people who hold our ends and begin where we end. We are ultimately the loneliest humans to have lived and it will not change until we radically alter our little worlds and the world at large.
When the silence becomes stifling, I call S.
My friend S. has the most beautiful voice ever. It doesn’t matter what she’s saying, listening to her just makes the day better. When she reads my poems, I am tempted to believe them. She called me on the first of November to check up. Usually, these conversations are perfunctory and I don’t like them but we caught up (we hadn’t talked in about a year), catching up was a conversation that went on for about 90 minutes and ranged from featherweight jokes to heartfelt tears (She’s a big advocate for crying it out). The conversation was just too good that we talked again the next day for over 200 minutes, or 3+ hours and kept talking since then.
Not a lot of people are naturally kind; a handful of people had to learn empathy, some had to cast it off, some try to pretend (cosplay) their way into it, some never bothered about it but a few preserve their natural gift of empathy. My friend S. is of the last category.
1. She doesn’t love with silence, from a distance or occasionally.
2. I am always reminded every time that I am loved.
3. She’s interested in my creative output even when she doesn’t get it.
4. Did I mention she reads my poems?
5. I mentioned my problems with sleep one time and she started waking up briefly to check if I was asleep. (This is still blowing my mind!!!)
6. She sent me to the hospital when I could not cope with it anymore.
Some people find it easy to be good when the going is good but lack the fortitude for hardship
— Lesley Nneka Arimah
The unscheduled procedure in December meant I was alone in the hospital and nobody could come to me. I was talking to S. and told her about it. She called and said she wished she could come even though she does not live in Lagos, I never doubted her presence and I felt immensely comforted like she was holding my hand.
Eye procedures are painful. Fortunately, I have a lifetime practice of managing or hiding pain so not many can see it until they are told. But…being an empathetic person means S. could sense my pain, so she called me immediately after the procedure and talked to me until I was close to home and again after I got home.
My friend S. is always so kind to me. I sometimes wonder if I deserve these acts of kindness. I love her, I am always telling her how much I love her, I wonder if that is enough.
