 |
| Source: www.abujatimes.com |
Adejoh Idoko Momoh
‘It was a little harder this time’,
most people don’t understand this when I tell it and there’s good reason not
to. After all, I always wore a smile, was first to assure I’d be fine in no
time and was out of the hospital two days after surgery. I shared with no one
the horrid tales of how I thought I’d not survive the procedure, not even with
my partner or family; it’s this not being able to tell that hurt the most: Just
knowing that everyone has his problems and not wanting to burden anyone.
They didn’t see and I didn’t tell
them of the nausea that wouldn’t let me sleep for all my recovery. Or that constantly
lingering pain that made me pause even as I tried to do seemingly normal
things. How waking from the anesthesia felt like an out-of-body experience and
how I could hear the doctors call my name even as I struggled to respond. Every
time I formed words in my head they never came out of my mouth. When they
finally came the first thing I said was something so inappropriate the doctors
cringed.
The thing about surgery and recovery is
that even when no one pressures you to take strides or expects you to make a
full recovery immediately; you put the pressure on yourself. Like proving the
point that you are strong and can beat the weakness associated with
recuperating.
For me, the pressure begins with the
very origins of illness; they say an inguinal hernia is mostly caused by
pressure to the abdominal wall; it typically presents in patients as they are
young and keeps increasing in size as they do things that further weaken the
wall. However irrational some guilt starts to prick at you; afterall this pressure is
brought about by your own acts.
For most people who suffer hernia or
will suffer it, I say this; hernias are typically non threatening and there is
the temptation to save yourself the needless procedure that fixes it because it
poses no harm. Know that in all these, there is the very slim chance that it gets strangulated and from
reduced blood supply to severe pain and possibly a fever there are many
downsides to this. My advice, if you start to see signs of a hernia, have it fixed before it
becomes an emergency.
Please feel free to share if you enjoy reading this post. If you need to
talk, please leave me a mail at momoh.adejoh@gmail.com
and I promise to respond immediately.
