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So, the other day,
I had surgery done. It was no big deal, really. There was this needy
benign growth on my left shoulder that, well, kept growing. I called it
the monkey on my shoulder. My family hated it. They called it names,
awful names. They wanted it gone. It became a conversation piece in our
household. My family came together around my monkey, it had to go, even
though my doctor had decreed that it was not a problem. My wife
overruled our doctor. It had to go. You do what your wife tells you.
Your doctor does what your wife wants.

Before the doctor
slices into you, they take you to a private room for “prep” work, in
which you are handed over from one medical busybody to the other. They
ask you things, you mostly lie to protect your dignity. Sample stupid
question: “Would you consider yourself a light, moderate, or a heavy
drinker?” Heh! They wanted to know if I was allergic to any medicine. I
said quinine, hoping to be quarantined; I needed the rest from work and
home. The nurses googled quinine on their laptops (yes, they didn’t
know) and huddled anxiously when they saw the word “malaria.”

The nurses were
smart, pretty, and sweet, almost shy. One brunette seemed to take a
liking to me, the way a cheerleader takes a liking to a bespectacled
nerd. “He is so sweet,” she enthused breathlessly to anybody who would
listen. She fussed over me, paid every attention to me. I was
flattered. I overheard her teaching several other nurses how to mangle
my name.

Brunette Nurse
went and found a Nigerian nurse to say hello to me, I don’t know why.
She was Ndiigbo, we grinned sheepishly at each other as we struggled to
humour this white sister trying to forge a kinship. We did not
understand the rejection; why, culturally we were each closer to her
than we were to each other. Through contrived accents, we happily
rejected each other and Ndiigbo fled into the mess of rooms and broken
patients. I missed my wife and I asked for her to be with me. Brunette
Nurse went and got my wife. My wife sat with me and nobody came again
to fuss with me. Then some stalwarts came to wheel me away for the
operation. They would not let my wife come with me. Brunette Nurse
wished me luck.

Going to the
operating table is interesting. There is a strange finality to being
wheeled away. It feels like going to one’s execution. In the operating
room, I am strapped to a gurney by pretty chatty people, babbling nice
things. They are trained to be affirming, encouraging me even when I am
not following directions. The surgeon is chatty, but indifferent to
knowledge outside of his profession.

I like him. He is
in his forties, but he is still wearing the spirit of a boy. He tells
me that his parents bought this house in this great neighborhood in the
60s; he doesn’t know what the house is worth today. He has trouble
converting the past to the present value. I help him. He grows quiet.

Except for a
colonoscopy, I have never really done anything this invasive. As I lay
there shivering on the operating gurney, I remember my uncle Elephant
in my ancestral land; poet, griot and herbalist. He believes that
witches and wizards are responsible for the fate of the living. All
ailments, including apparently cancer, were treated by an enema which
he gleefully administered to the unwilling. He made some of the most
awful-tasting concoctions out of plants that grew around our compound.
I have not so fond memories of trying to swallow his creations in the
sixties during the Nigerian civil war. At those times, the war didn’t
seem too far away.

The doctor starts
snipping away at my monkey with a studied nonchalance. I loudly marvel
at the invasive techniques of Western medicine. He asks me: “What do
you mean?” I think to myself, this man is an idiot. How did his
ancestors get to the moon? I survive the idiot’s knife. I actually like
him. He is not an idiot. He is a professional who has little patience
for the undisciplined flourishes of my literary mind.

Surgery over, my
wife retrieves me and takes me home. It has been a long day; my wife
wants a sandwich. We get one from a bakery. I don’t like sandwiches,
something about meat between slices of bread I find merely fascinating.
I want to go home to comfort food; my wife’s white rice and goat meat
stew.

I reach into the
hospital bag that houses my belongings and my friend’s avatar waits
patiently for me in my iPhone. My friend’s question lurks anxiously on
yahoo chat, “How did it go?” I type back, “nbd, I am still here,
everything is as it should be, lol.” The response returns, dripping
with relief and exasperation: “You!”

I am still here. And the beat goes on.