DAKTARI'S OUT TO GET ME

"Chew on gum and eat salty crackers. Apparently it helps with that steely taste in your mouth and the loss of appetite after chemotherapy." that was Monthe Sila,MD. My whole life rotates around doctors and hospitals and I love it. It's the closest i could get to my dream of becoming a doctor. All is not lost though. I could still do my years of legal studies and computer science after which I embark on my ten years of med school and die a happy woman. "She died in the line of purpose" my eulogy shall read.


So Saturday afternoon was spent pretty much naked, in a darkened room, while a ruggedly handsome young man applied lashings of warm lubricating jelly on my soft underbelly. Fantasy aside, he is old, physically harsh to the eye but fit for the job. But am allowed to create my own pictures if it makes me happy. Sounds like fun. Unfortunately, this was an ultrasound test, part of my fifth medical so far this year.


I have been bent double, pumped up, sucked dry and asked a range of questions so impertinent that even John Sibi-Okumu would blanch. I have been hit, probed, tickled, smeared and X-rayed, and I've forgotten what it's like to pee in a lavatory. These days, i only ever relieve myself into small plastic vials.


When Mitch first went to high school, the doctor held his testicles and asked him to cough. He could have established his reflexes were fine by tapping his knees gently with a small rounders bat, but hey, he went to a public school, so into his pants the doctor plunged. Mine was milder, the school nurse used to wring and squeeze my belly in the name of life detection. That was enough to abort whichever human life was there anyway.

Today, you get into a hospital and the first question is, "Do you have AIDS?". Well, unless you can catch it by slobbing infront of your laptop or reading volumes of legal books, I very much doubt it.


The second question is whether you are partial to a bit of same-sex heroin. Can we just get one thing clear. I know there are no Restore and Build Kenya (RBK) voters in the media, but there are several heterosexuals and am one of them. And no, i have never enjoyed the luxury of Koinange Street men, and the only hypodermic needle I've seen all week is the one you are about to plunge into my arm to confirm I'm not lying.

The fact that you smoke 45 cigars a day and hot box on weed the entire night never seem to bother doctors. Not until you get to page 331 of the form.

When they are convinced I am not the Campus Diva who has taken prostitution to a whole new level, they move on to check my blood pressure. Mine is 100/60, same as it was last month, when Pledge 25 asked the same damn thing.

Then you pee in another jug, and then you relax as the nurse hunts around for the tiny bit of blood you have left after Pledge 25 had their fill the previous month. After all the blood tests this month, I couldn't be a donor even to an injured cockroach in my house. small wonder the pressure is so low.

After the fluid tests, the doctor usually sticks his whole head into my vagina. Well that’s what it always feels like. “Aaaaaaargh.” I normally say until he comes out again only to explain that it was only his finger.

Soon, you will be led to daktari’s scales which, in doctor’s surgeries,  are always set to over-read. I am 53kgs, minus the few decimated kilos of all the blood and urine that has been extracted. But in Daktari's surgery, i weigh the same as Manuel Uribe. This, to my grandmother, is a good thing. Fat people are ipso facto unatrractive, which means they are less likely to be having much in the way of woman-on-man action.

At the end of the session, by which time everyone in the waiting room has died from whatever it was that brought them there in the first place, you will be asked to give your family medical history dating back to the Medieval Age.

Why? Even after the doc has hit you in the elbow with his hammer and asked you to read his wall, he will still not know if there are tumours the size of conkers dangling from your brain, but the form will be completed anyway.

I haven't finished yet because at some point the GP will uncover something that warrants further investigation. This will mean a trip to KNH where I will get lost.

I did, and that's how I came to be lying in a darkened room, with my dream guy smearing me with KY jelly. He then ran his ultrasound detector all over my belly, befor turning on the light and giving me the good news. I'm not pregnant.

LIFE AFTER CANCER

Doesn't the world owe me some kind of parade or fireworks show? that in itself would be enough first down payment towards compensating for my troubles. That was my last day of breast cancer treatment. It left me feeling disoriented like someone who had just fallen off a flight of stairs. I seriously did not know which way was up or what road i was to take next. Instead of my healing gratitude leaving me happy and content, I was miserable and depressed. So I walk out of the radio room past the hallway into the oncology waiting room and out into the parking lot, all the while wondering how i was to deal with life after cancer.

I had never worked for something so hard, let alone something so anti-climactic! World, I would appreciate unicorns or some talking horses..just something!
"hey lovely.." came a tentative voice behind. I turned around to a beautiful young woman with flawless skin.quite some sight to behold. Yes dear, I am quite straight-at least to the best of my emotional knowledge. All the while am thinking ..you better be selling unicorns! "....you look like you just had a chemo.."

All i did was nod affirmatively, checking whether with her were some bottles of ionized water or mineral juice for sale. I am slowly starting to believe in miracles you know.

"Should it feel this bad...I mean, should chemotherapy hurt this bad?" She continued, looking at me like she needed some reassurance. My eyes were a reflection of her own- they read depression and desperation.

"Sweetheart, it feels like I have been beat everywhere. Yeah, I have just been run over by a truck.it's difficult to breath. But that is pretty much all there is to the feeling." In her eyes I saw a desperation that mirrored my own -- not for relief from pain, but for the comfort of reassurance. She could deal with the pain if only she knew it was the right kind of pain. So I told her. Her face immediately relaxed. As she turned to go back into the oncology waiting room, she thanked me for confirming the one thing she needed to know at that moment-that she was normal!I climbed into the car, smiled at Mitch, and waited for the joy that was certain to follow -- after so many disappointments, the day had finally arrived. I'd be able to walk unaided; I'd be able to breathe. Strangers would stop addressing me as "madam".

Instead of joy, I spent the next 47 minutes crying effortlessly on Mitch's shoulder.That was when I knew: I'd lost it. What person with even a shred of understanding would act this way? Who responds to the conclusion of an active fight against death with increasing levels of depression, anxiety and grief? Well... I did.

Looking back now, I wish someone had been there to answer that question for me in the coming days and months. Is this normal? Am I losing my mind? How can I be grateful and yet still be so miserable? I didn't know what a panic attack was, how to deal with my own angry outbursts or the inability to remember my boyfriend's name. I didn't know how hard it would be to get out of bed every day, or that I'd count the minutes until my next fake bathroom trip so my classmates and coworkers wouldn't see me cry. The resentment I felt every time someone introduced me as "a miracle." How to wade through the guilt of my own survival as friend after friend passed away. Above all, the sheer exhaustion of alienation, of no longer belonging in my own skin, of building a new self while mourning the loss of the life I had loved and wanted.

A friend came over to my room yesterday. Yes i live in some hostel. No one at her new job knows about the three surgeries and chemo that concluded two weeks ago. Her coworkers complain about the lackadaisical attitude of the IT staff; she weeps in her car during lunch break. They don't know she's bald; she doesn't know how she's going to make it through the next hour. She feels like a horrible person for thinking people don't know how easy they have it.

"My family and friends talk about what an inspiration I am. They claim some kind of responsibility for getting me through this because they said a prayer and sent a mass email. But I cry myself to sleep every night. I can't stop crying. It's over, but it isn't over."

So before she could ask, I told her. I don't know if it's supposed to hurt this bad, but sometimes it does. If anyone tells you otherwise, just go ahead and assume the universe has bribed them with unicorns, fireworks, and a brand new brain.

Breast cancer somehow prepared me for ovarian cancer. Am glad. Yes, you heard me, I am.