A Hospital Remembrance

I said this thing that is doing me was malaria, but my mother said it was typhoid. On the phone, her Igbo was loud and came out like bombs. She said typhoid and typhoid like she was here with me or she was the doctor. Chimee, tell them to give you typhoid drugs. Tell that doctor that your current symptoms is exactly the same symptoms you had when you were diagnosed with typhoid in Lagos. Mummy, you are not a doctor, but I will tell him. I speak to my American friend who thought I have gotten the flu and needs a vaccine as soon as possible, who thinks I’ve gone to carry one American sickness like allergies or another big English.

And I remember once the typhoid happened to me in Lagos and I felt too light like I was fainting or like ordinary breeze was carrying me. I registered at the big man hospital in our estate in Egbeda. I met a doctor who told me to do many tests, whose eyeglasses could not fit onto his face, always slipping to the lower ridge of his nose, whose receding hairline had made him look like he was wearing a special skull cap, who told me that it seemed I bothered too much, who told me to stop thinking. I agreed. I said okay. He said my test results were good and then he told the nurse to give me injections and some pills. In the evenings when I go to take the injection, the nurse draws down my short as though she had a previous quarrel with me or my buttocks. She says: Bros, the time has come, then I would smile and tighten my muscles for the syringe to enter. Then she would shrug.

“Oga, this is needle. Please free yourself nah, ah, what is this one now nah?”

“Okay, sorry”

“Or do you want this needle to break inside your bum bum?”

“No”

“Do you want to get abscess?”

“No”

“Then let’s do this thing and go”

“Okay”

So when I told her to take it easy, she dropped the needle and adjusted her gloves.

“Bros, I will leave you here o. I have other patients to look at”

Fall is here and winter will come soon. The leaves are either changing color or running away from their branches. I still feel too malaria and weak and tired. My mother called again in the night. Nnaa, tell them you have typhoid, open your mouth and tell them this, she said, ending every sentence with inugo? And then I would say yes, but I would go in the night and break out the tablet of malaria dugs I have had for years in my traveling box. I drank it. There was no paracetamol and panadol in my box. The ones I had were exhausted so I just swallowed the malaria drug like that, with a tumbler full of water, the tumbler that I bought at Walmart that I now regret why I actually went to the store and gave that woman 2 dollars for a cup I won’t be using.

When I was growing up in our hometown with my parents, our family doctor, Doctor Egwurugwu- whom my father said was too intelligent and specific- always said malaria was our friend. My father said it as though his other doctor friends were not intelligent and specific. Then later, from when I turned 18, just after secondary school, we switched to Doctor Ozobia. My father said he had some funding from USAID to set up a community clinic in our hometown and he was able to get that funding because he was too brilliant and spectacular. My father switched from Dr. Egwurugwu’s intelligent and specific to Dr. Ozobia’s brilliant and spectacular. Doctor Ozobia was a tall huge man with mustache like Herbert Macaulay. His white shirt and large trousers were too ironed and his large sandals stepped on the floor as he walked like it would compress the floor. If Doctor Ozobia told you to take this, and you take it, your sickness disappeared the next minute. The days he had to do surgeries, he brought his children to see. While in University and each time malaria struck me, I just took the bus to Orlu and Doctor Ozobia would clear everything.

Now it’s America and they don’t even really have a bus to take to Dr. Ozobia. You have to set up an appointment and wait for your appointment and pray that you do not die on the road before tomorrow and before your appointment. But they will say you won’t die, they would say nothing critical would happen. They would say if an emergency occurs, you call 911 and they take you to emergency. I said okay, no problem. 911. Emergency. Okay o. I hear. American wonder. Because we don’t have 911 where I grew up. Even when my 3 year old cousin Chioma died in 2005, there was no ambulance and my father used his car. I joined the car to the hospital and the first woman we saw was Chioma’s mother carrying Chioma’s dead body to us. She has left me, she said. When I tried to get out of the car, my father screamed that I should fucking get back. We drove home. Chioma’s mother was beside me, wrapped Chioma with a wrapper that covered her face, she’d tears and cleaned them, choked on the tears, didn’t say anything until we got home and buried Chioma. That night, we all didn’t sleep.

My Texas health insurance would be my only motivation to visit the hospital and since my symptoms were not gone yet. It was the same insurance that took me to the eye hospital and checked everything and gave me results but didn’t cover my $700 prescription eyeglasses and then I told them I was going to answer a call but I ran away and respected myself and went home. My friends were traveling to Nepal and I had them order a prescription glasses for me for $25. Also what I would get in Lagos for $15. Nsogbu uwa everywhere.

My friend is driving the car and I’m inside. I’m at the hospital and have met a doctor who was such a good listener. He is now pressing my stomach and the sides of my body where my ribs are. I say in my mind: Doctor please don’t break my ribs, take it easy because I know this my American health insurance won’t cover me if these bones break. Maka Chukwu. He is flashing a large torchlight onto my eyes and asking me what my sexual orientation is, asking me if I smoke, asking me and asking me and asking-asking, his English a mix of American and Igbo accent, his words dropping like someone with water in his mouth because his face mask was doubled. He is saying that nothing is wrong with me and that I should go home and do the tests that he has recommended. I said okay and didn’t talk about the typhoid my mother said I should say, my mother, who is not a doctor, who was an artist and who was the principal of one of the most popular girls technical colleges in our town. Not a doctor or a nurse. Okay.

I am in the laboratory now and taking all the tests, all of them, from A to Z, even malaria. They are all negative, everything green, except my very weird vitamin D deficiency- and this is why I now try to go to the park close to my apartment to take the sun when it comes. It comes like a thief. On and off or something like that. I meet my doctor again and he sends me to the pharmacy to take the COVID-19 booster shot and the flu shot. He recommends vitamin D. But I am telling him that I still feel unwell. Now it’s time to tell him that I think I have typhoid and I need him to prescribe a typhoid medication. But he will tell me to go to the laboratory again. I have to schedule an appointment. I have to sit there and offer my left hand like the body of Christ for the woman in blue to take all the blood again, to find my veins and stick the syringe on there and keep sucking my blood.