Relax! What are you thinking of?

Hello beautiful people!!!…

I hope you guys are doing great. It’s late at night and I’m in a good mood. I have the longest gist in the history of mankind so I decided to drop it on you guys in the middle of the night while most of you are asleep. I wasn’t going to say anything at first because of two people who I am sure will laugh at my misfortune. However, I’m feeling much better about the situation and whether or not they laugh at me is the very least of my problems.

Anyway, the last time we spoke, I told you guys that I wasn’t feeling well yeah? I had gone to a clinic and gotten treatment for malaria. Ok, remember the part where I said I flung my Ghana-must-go-bag full of medicine to one corner of my house? Well, I wasn’t lying. I only took out the pain meds and dumped the rest, including the dodgy looking malaria tablets. It was an anti-malarial with a very long funny name. And guess what?! There was no picture of a mosquito on the packet! What self-respecting anti-malarial drug company doesn’t put a picture/drawing of a mosquito on the packet??

A few days later, I started feeling very off again. I was slow at work and the most routine tasks felt like hard physical labour. I was so darn tired all the time. So, I started with the anti-malarial, took them for the three days, complete dose and all, and yet there was no improvement. I went for a close friend’s wedding on Saturday but I couldn’t turn up like I’d been planning to. My lovely dress, nice hair and make up were all wasted because I just sat through the wedding like a zombie… I didn’t even get to wear my stripper heels.

I got home tired and it was my brother who first noticed my feet. They had swollen to almost twice their size, which was odd because I didn’t wear heels.

On Monday, I went back to the clinic. I saw a doctor, different from the one I saw on my first trip. This one looked like a kid, and was probably still a student. I could tell because he did everything by the book. He took his time to thoroughly examine me. He listened to my breathing, felt my organs for any enlargement, checked my eyes, my throat, my nipple pointillism rate… dude checked everything. Then he put me down for some tests.

The nurses weren’t happy about it though…

“I don’t understand this kain doctor sef”

“See essay wey im write”

“Im tink say e still de school”

“Na student na… the work e dey shack am”

“Abeg make she see MD. All this plenty story ontop fever”

I got the world-peace injection again, slept a while then woke up when the MD arrived. He prescribed some more painkillers and something called Lasix, to make me pee all the fluid in my ankles out. His biggest concern, he said, was my low blood level. He asked me to come back on Friday to check the swelling (in my ankles and neck) and check my PCV again.

I couldn’t go to work on Tuesday and HR started calling. I had already missed two days of work the previous week. She was saying, “If you don’t think you’re getting adequate care there, I suggest you go somewhere else.”

On Thursday, I saw our company’s medical consultant. He examined me briefly and sent me to another hospital with a note to the owner. I got there Friday morning in a very bad state… weak, dizzy and as usual, out of breath. My feet resembled elephant’s feet and I could feel the liquid move whenever I took a step. I didn’t have the note our consultant gave me, but I had my medical card so I was allowed to see the doctor.

I knew the routine… all I had to do was explain how it was doing me and after seeing three other doctors, I had become a pro at listing out the issues. I even knew my blood test results from Monday by heart and I rattled them off. He got me to lie on my back, and being the expert that I am, as soon as I saw him take out his stethoscope, I unbuttoned my blouse and turned my head to the left so he could listen to my lungs and heart. Then he examined the swelling in my ankles.

Shit became real when he took my BP. He took it the first time, waited a few minutes and then took it again. I started to sense there was a problem when he asked the nurse to get him another BP-measuring thing. He asked her to take it and she did. They were both eyeing each other above my head. No one said anything for a while and I didn’t want to ask questions.

Finally, the doctor sat on the edge of his table in front of me and with a grim look, he asked, “Is there a history of High blood pressure in your family? On your dad’s side or mum’s side?”

I laughed because I wasn’t sure how to answer… I know there was a time my dad was on meds for his BP. And growing up, my mum used to yell, “Ngozi you wee not kee me in this house! You will not give me hypertension!!” I don’t know for sure if I ever succeeded in actually raising her BP. I told him yes, there’s a history.

He nodded like it was the answer he was expecting… then there was a barrage of questions;

What do you do?

What’s your job like?

Who is your biggest client?

Are you in a relationship?

When did your last relationship end?

How long were you together?

Does it bother you that you’re not in a relationship?

Is there anything on your mind?

I was tired and some of the questions were beginning to feel very personal. I finally asked if there was a problem and he said, “It seems you are severely hypertensive. Your BP is 165/102.”

I haven’t opened a Biochemistry text book in a long while so I couldn’t remember the normal BP range. I thought of asking my friend Google, but I didn’t want to whip out my phone with the both of them watching me. Whatever the range, he had said severely, not mildly… severely wasn’t good. Behind me, the nurse kept asking, “What are you thinking of?”

The doctor told me that he would have to keep me in the hospital for observation, then he did some sort of hand signal and the nurse left. Whatever sign he did, it must’ve meant, prepare a room for her immediately cos that’s exactly what she did. From then on, everything happened very fast. He set up an IV line and right then and there in his office, they started pushing God-knows-what into my veins.

“Does this mean I’m being admitted?”

“Yes”

“Can I please go home and come back in the evening?”

The look he gave me told me that I had asked a very stupid question.

My room looked like a hotel room with a hospital bed. Immediately I entered, I started to think of the bills… I knew I was covered by my HMO but I wasn’t sure what I was entitled to. I didn’t know if I was covered for all the tests they were going to take, I didn’t know if I should even be in that hospital… it looked like a hospital for my ogas. Lastly, I didn’t know if I was entitled to the Sheraton hotel-like room. A senior doctor, a much older man, was called in to see me. I realized later that he was the one I was supposed to give the note to.

“Just relax dear, we’re going to get your BP back down ok? But you need to relax.”

Brethren, I was laying still, not moving a muscle and nigga kept telling me to relax. How? The nurse gave me a tiny white pill… said it would work like magic. I swallowed it, forgetting to ask what form of magic magic it was supposed to perform. She woke me up some time later and took my BPagain and saw that it had crashed to 130/85. That was the magic.

“This means I can go home right?” I had a shopping list folded in my novel. The plan for Friday had been to see the doctor, get whatever treatment I needed and then go to the market to get stuff for Afang soup. The next day was election and, unlike last time, I wanted to be well prepared. I wanted to do my apocalyptic end-of-the-world shopping early enough. I checked the time… it was almost 1:00pm. If I leave now, mama Obinna should still have periwinkle by the time I get to the market.

The nurse said I couldn’t go, I should lie down and just relax. Relaaaax. The doctor came up and kept me company for a long while. He listened to my breathing occasionally and checked my pulse. Did I mention how ridiculously hot this young man is? And he was so easy to talk to… he said I strike him as a quiet and reserved person (LOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL!!!!!). We talked about school, about medicine and we did the thing where you meet someone and because you’ve both been to the same places, you try and find out who they know. You’ll be desperately looking for someone or something in common with the person…

We didn’t find a person, but we found a place in common. I schooled in Okada, he served in Edo state… and the NYSC camp is in Okada. So we talked about Okada. He schooled in UI so I racked my brains for anyone I know who schooled in UI… or did IT in UI… or visited UI. I came up with nothing.

By evening, I accepted that I wasn’t going anywhere… not with the IV line still in my arm so I relaaaaxed. My brother brought some stuff over for me and my parents started bombarding me with phone calls. Y’all know how African parents can be… as a child, you can fall and hurt yourself and your mum would spank you for scaring the shit out of her.

I knew it was going to be like that so I ignored their calls. My mum would ask me why I want to give her hypertension by becoming hypertensive… my dad would tell me everything I did wrong since primary 5 and how it led to my present condition. My sister had to talk to both of them… more like tutor them on things they can and cannot say when speaking to me. When she was sure they were ready, she told me I could call them back.

My mum scored higher than my dad… she just kept saying, We thank God” and “God bless you” throughout the conversation. My dad’s convo was funny because I couldn’t really hear what he was saying. I think he must’ve taped his mouth with duct tape so that he wouldn’t say anything stupid. Overall, they both tried.

Saturday was election day and everywhere was quiet. The nurse (who happens to be the sweetest nurse on this planet) came in every couple of hours to check on me and check my BP, but I was so unhappy. I was tired of being cooped up in my Sheraton-like room. The hot doctor came in the evening to say hi, but even that didn’t excite me. My BP had gone back up to 160/100 despite all the nameless tablets I was being given. The crankiness in me started to show… I even insinuated that the BP reading thing was bad and they just wanted to keep me here.

So sexy doctor used the machine to measure his own BP. Then, to be doubly sure, he did for the sweetest nurse as well. There was nothing wrong with the machine. I thought Fuck you and your 110s and 120s BPs… fuck. You!

I took a sleeping pill and just stared out the window till I fell asleep. And boy did I sleep! The sweetest nurse woke me up some time in the middle of the night to check my BP but I deliberately didn’t ask her for the numbers. I just went back to sleep after she left.

I woke up today feeling much better. The swelling in my ankles has reduced and I was allowed to take a stroll to the Pharmacy downstairs. I walked past the Pharmacy, out of the hospital compound and onto the main street. I walked for quite a while, almost to the end of the street. On Friday, I couldn’t walk up the stairs without feeling like I had run a mile, but today, I walked. When I was tired, I turned back. The return journey was much harder because it was then I realized just how far I had walked, but I felt fine. I was tired, but not panting like a retarded hyena.

The senior doc, they call him Prof, came to see me and told me all the tests I’m going to have to do tomorrow and the new drugs he’s putting me on. Then he talked about changes I’m going to have to make… how I can’t do rigorous exercise anymore, how I have to eat healthy from now on, how I have to avoid salt, blah blah blah, no ice-cream, blah blah blah, no amala etc.

I scoffed at the ‘no ice-cream’ part… say wetin happun na?

So my brethren, that’s where we are now 🙁  I am tired and I have to sleep now. We’ll carry on tomorrow.

Have a blessed week!

ps: Yes, I had time to take selfies yesterday ( ._.)

Hospital 1              Hospital 2

20150412_073351

World peace in a syringe…

Hello beautiful people…

I’m ill :'(

I woke up feeling terrible on Saturday morning so I did what I do best; I self-medicated on painkillers and Lucozade Boost. I even missed church on Sunday. I dragged myself to work yesterday even though I still felt like shit and finally, today, I landed in the hospital early this morning, weak and bra-less.

I was lying down, half dead on the hospital bed and all I could think about was how to gist you guys what was going on. My whole body hurt, but my thumb was just fine. I could still swipe with it so typing out a blog post wouldn’t be hard. I just didn’t know if it was possible to send out a post with my phone.

The doctor came and I didn’t wait for my guy to land… I started confessing. See, I watch a lot of CI (Crime and Investigation) and ID (Investigation Discovery). I know how these things work. It’s not during my autopsy that the medical examiner will discover that it was the amala-ewedu-stew-Snapp-Ibuprofen combo I had on Saturday that killed me… so I told him everything. l told him about the amount of painkillers I’d been taking, told him about the coughing, the nausea, everything! He didn’t look like he was judging me… or maybe he was judging me in his mind. I don’t know.

The blood guy was asleep when I got to the lab so they had to shake him hard to wake up and take my blood for testing. He asked for a few seconds to get himself fully awake. That was fine by me… I told him to take as long as he needed. Better safe than sorry abi? Plus I could see that he was really tired. He walked out of the room, came back less than a minute later and the niggah still pricked my thumb three times to get blood… THREE!!!

I asked him how many pricks it would’ve taken if the sleep was still in his eye… Na im be say e for cut plus my big toe join. He didn’t laugh at my joke because nobody likes a wiseass  ( ._.) He said he did it like that because he didn’t want to go in too deep and hurt me (words no celibate woman wants to be hearing).

I ended up in a tiny air conditioned room and then someone, who I think was probably sent from God, came in and injected me with what I now believe, is the answer to world peace. I don’t know what was in that thing, but it made me sleeeeeeeeep for hours and it took all the pain away. One dose of that magic injection and suddenlyyyyyy life had new meaning to meeee! And there is beauty up above… and things I never take notice of…

Wake up, suddenly…

And hear that test results show I have Malaria and a chest infection :’(

After that, they sent me away with a Ghana-must-go bag full of tablets and syrup that I’ve already flung to a corner of my room. I’ve never seen this suspicious-looking brand of Malaria tablets before. Why couldn’t they just give me some more of the thing in the injection??? Why don’t they want world peace??

Anyway, on my way home, to celebrate my HIV-negativity, I stopped over at Cold Stone to get some ice cream. I’m home now and I’m feeling much better. I’m just excited that I survived the trip to the hospital… Notin do me!

Hope you are having a great week so far  :-*  :-*

As you were…

The importance of contraception during threesomes…

Good morning beautiful people of God!! 😀

E don tey abi? Hope you guys are doing great… I have exactly one hour before I have to start work on a brand new project so I decided to say hi. My team has done all the ground work and we think we’re prepared. I’m not particularly excited about it because it’s going to be tough, but it’s nice to do a different kind of job sometimes.

I’ve been ok… I guess. It’s been a difficult couple of weeks. My 10-month old generator packed up and died on me. It was running fine one minute and then suddenly it let out a Mariah Carey-ish scream (WoahAaaaaaheeeeeeee!!), then it farted twice and just died. The gen doctor says it’s going to cost 35,000 Naira to fix it, so I got a big plastic bag and covered it up. It will rest in peace till further notice.

I’ve done the math… 35k is the equivalent of about 20 to 23 trips to Cold Stone Creamery. And if I’m honest to myself, I know I have been there way more than 23 times this year alone. Basically, I’ve licked my generator repair money :’(

On Saturday, I went with a friend to Balogun market. I hate markets because they are filthy, disgusting places full of rude disgusting (Igbo) men who pull at you. There’re also sweaty people with whom you exchange body fluids when you have to walk so close to them. It’s terrible, but my friend is preparing for her wedding and I didn’t want her to face all that stress alone.

We were in a shop looking at different kinds of chord lace fabric. Ok, so maybe I was sitting down on a plastic stool and charging my phone while my friend was looking at different kinds of chord lace (don’t judge me jor… I don’t have light and my gen is bad; every socket is a potential phone charger). Anyway, we were sha in one fabric shop. Opposite that shop was a similar fabric shop, but the lady there had two babies. The boy was about three or four years old and the girl was barely a year old. She was just learning to walk. I watched them rolling around on the shop floor near their mother’s feet. Then they came out of her shop and rolled around some more on the wet ground between the shops. The girl picked everything she saw and stuck it in her mouth- a plastic toy, a pen, her mum’s phone, something that looked like a dead lizard – and no one stopped her. Their mother just sat back and looked like she was in a trance… a few times, I saw her move her arms to swat flies away, but that was it.

The kids then started heading towards the shop I was in and I became immediately alarmed. I was just by the corner, very near the shop door. I know how kids can be, especially those ones learning to walk. They hold unto every available thing as support; they will hold unto stools, table legs, cabinets and people’s knees… people’s knees!!

My knees!!!

And I was wearing my ripped jeans, the one that has more skin than actual jeans so both knees were exposed. The kids managed to climb the steps leading to my shop, with the girl struggling more than her big brother. She had a wet patch on her dress that may or may not have been pee mixed with water from the puddle she had rolled in. She got to the shop, turned back and I think at that point, it hit her how far away her mum was. She started to call out to her mum.

“Mummy!! Mummyyyyyyy!!” and then her brother joined her. They were both calling out for their mum.

Mum looked up, waved to them and smiled, then she pointed at me and said the three most dreaded words;

“G’aan meet aunty…”

I looked to my left and then to my right and tears filled my eyes because I was the only aunty in sight. My friend and the shop attendant were both buried in yards and yards of aso ebi.

It was like the time my customer (the lady I buy my fruits from) was with her grand-daughter. The baby girl had pooped on the ground beside the shop and was squatting, waiting for someone to wipe her clean. No one came cos grandma was busy with me. She must’ve felt abandoned and exposed, squatting butt-naked in full view of Lekki residents because she started to cry. Her right hand went to her bum and came back up with poop stains. She stood up (by now she was wailing) and started heading towards the kiosk to meet grandma. I was at the entrance of the kiosk and I knew she was going to have to go past me to get in. Grandma, saw her coming and said those words…

“I’m coming oh!!! Stop crying… Oya g’aan meet aunty.

NOOOOOOOOO!!!! All I saw was a tiny hand with brown poop stains coming towards my knee for support :’(

Last year, on one of the days I had interviews, a lady walked into the hall with two kids. Immediately they got in, they were running around the place and screaming… generally doing what kids do. Their screams were distracting other candidates, but it was fine. That didn’t bother me at all. Where I had a problem was when it was time for the lady to be interviewed. She waited till I was free and walked into my cubicle with both kids and announced;

“You people should g’aan greet aunty

I thought No!  Don’t greet aunty. Aunty doesn’t think you’re cute!!

It’s the same on buses…

“G’aan seedown wit onkoo…”

“Stay wit aunty…”

“Let onkoo carry you…”

Why??? When did I participate in all these threesomes that conceived all these children scattered around Lagos? Why do I have to share your child/children?

Then, I always feel guilty afterwards because I know I genuinely love babies. But it makes me wonder.  If I like cute, chubby, Vaseline and baby powder-scented kids and not those snot-nosed, mud/pee/poop-covered, ground rolling Oshodi babies, can I then say that I have true brotherly love as is described in the bible? Do I really “love” kids?

If my ovaries don’t tingle at the sight of babies, does it mean I am not motherly?

If I meet an Oshodi poop baby that is in true distress, will I leap to the rescue, or will I buy gloves first?

Have a great week people!!

 ps: You’re probably wondering, what did I do in each situation right? Well, I jumped into oncoming traffic. It was a million times easier than getting poop/pee on my exposed knees…

080-B-O-O-T-Y-C-A-L-L

Good morning wonderful people!!!

I have work to do so I don’t know why I’m here… I’m soooo excited because I’m starting leave again on Monday. I had 10 leave days remaining from last year and after a tough, bloody battle with HR, my leave was finally approved. I was only given 5 days, but it’s better than nothing at all. Meanwhile, I have zero plans for the leave o. Smh…

It’s that time of year again and people are already so worked up! I hear girls are texting random exes and giving false hope to previously friend-zoned boys. No one wants to be alone tomorrow. And as usual, hearts will break…  Me, I love love, but I think whatever Valentine spirit I used to have in me is now dead. Hopefully, someday it will resurrect whenever I fall in love again, but for now, it’s just another day in the year.

Last year’s Val’s day was quite eventful, but not for me. I was still in my former client’s office and all the women got roses, cakes and gifts from their husbands, boyfriends, sugar daddies, toasters, friends-with-benefitors etc. It was interesting to watch, plus I got a lot of second-hand cake and chocolate handed down to me from my friend 😀

Don’t judge me… I have no shame.

A week before Val’s day, the guy I was sorta seeing then asked me what plans I had on the 15th. I was confused because I thought, who makes plans for February 15th?? What if it’s a trick? What if he’s planning a surprise? What if Stella Oduah thought she was paying for two Batmobiles? What if? What if?! What if?! Unfortunately, we had a fight some days before Val’s day and because I’m familiar with the fight-before-Val’s-day technique, I promptly discarded all those ‘what if?’ thoughts, got new batteries and resigned myself to having a romantic night with my dildo. I didn’t expect anything so I wasn’t disappointed.

The traffic report that day was grim so I chilled in the office till 9:00pm and still spent close to two hours in traffic on the way home. By the time I got home, I was too exhausted to do any effective and productive wanking so I slept. Basically, there was absolutely nothing spectacular about the day… but I was fine. Honestly. I wasn’t sad or depressed or anything. It was just one of those things. Me and the guy weren’t exactly dating, we weren’t official so it was all good.

Saturday the 15th was when I had a problem. I don’t remember what kind of day the 15th was but very late at night I was in bed, about to sleep, when I got a Whatsapp message from this dude. It started out innocently enough, till he mentioned that he was in the neighborhood, on his way back from an event. Can he come over?

I had mixed emotions, but what I felt most was cold-water-poured-over-my-body type of shock. Baba God, I asked, na me be dis? I sat up and stared at the screen for a long moment to make sure I was reading the words right.

Thank God for experience though… we’ve been there, done that. We have PhDs in this game. Plus we have gold medals for long jumping into conclusions. My theory was that this dude probably spent Val’s day with someone else. Knowing him, he splurged… went all out to impress whoever she was. The celebration continued on Saturday, they went to the party and when it was over, she sent him home with a kiss on his cheek and a pair of blue hairy balls.

That’s how he ended up on Whatsapp, chatting with me and because I’m such a nice, sweet girl 😉  I continued to chat with him. I figured that the party he attended was the same thing he had invited me to for the 15th. I asked him and he said, yes, it was the same thing. I asked how it went and he said it was really nice, he had a lot of fun. It wasn’t long before he wrote that he was outside my house… dude wasn’t kidding when he said he was in my neighborhood.

I was in a dilemma. It was 11:30pm and he was outside.  There were only two options;

  1. I could go out and let him in. We would have wild animalistic sex, sleep and make breakfast together in the morning. But then I would hate myself later.
  2. The second choice was to talk to him about my feelings, tell him that I felt terribly disrespected and let him down gently.

The knocking at the gate was getting louder and more frequent so I picked option three: I turned over and slept like a baby.

Happy Val’s Day guys… please don’t hurt anyone :-*

First of all, I would like to thank God…

Hello people!!

The funniest thing happened yesterday… I just had to gist you about it.

I couldn’t buy credits online in the evening so immediately I got home, I dropped my bags, got some money and went out to get credits. There’s this malam’s shop at the end of my street where I used buy stuff from all the time… I got there last night and I was surprised to see 3 of my old abokis, guys that I hadn’t seen in a loooong time. Apparently, they had traveled up North and came back towards the end of last year.

There was a lot of excitement, lots of hugging and hailing and greeting. Then we sat in a circle around a camp fire and did some catching up over suya and warm mugs of kunu…

I’m kidding  😀

There was no hugging. They were just happy to see me and I was happy to see them thas all. Every 10 seconds, they would ask, “How de work na?” and I kept saying “We thank God o! Work dey fine”. In reality, work no dey fine, but there was no point explaining the details to them. What do they know about modern day consulting and the growing trends in Human Resources?

“So why we no dey see you again na? Na de work?”

I sighed and finally said, “Oga, the work hard o! I don taya…”

At that, they all laughed, but then my main paddy out of the three said, “At least de work don come. Dat time wey de work never come, you dey shout work! work! Now e don come so e good. Money go dey enter small small.”

I was reminded of those days of unemployment. Honestly, it doesn’t even seem like such a long time ago. I used to stop by their shop to buy a white handkerchief and some chewing gum before going for all those job interviews. The gum was supposed to be for minty fresh breath but I would never chew it because I was afraid I would get carried away and chew like a retarded prostitute in front of the interviewer.

I remember that a few times, I actually considered dropping my CV with the abokis because of their clientele. Some big men in big cars used to park outside their shop, especially at night. The shop is at the corner of another street that leads to a hidden estate so a lot of these men used to stop and get cigarettes before driving out or driving back home. I thought they might be able to speak to one of their big-men customers on my behalf, but the only big men I ever met there were not interested in my creative and analytical skills. The big question on their minds was, “Can she swallow?”

I also remember on some very low weekends, when I had no food at home, I would take an empty bag and walk down to their kiosk to get supplies till whenever I had the cash to pay. I would get pasta, eggs, drinks, drinks and more drinks, mosquito repellent, tin tomatoes, drinking water etc. Now see how times have changed!…

Those are the people I should never ever forget really. Maybe when I’m picking up my Grammy or Oscar or Nobel Piss Prize, assuming that Kanye doesn’t interrupt me, I will accept it with my aboki posse… because they were there for me when I was nobody.

As you were…