“I feel ashamed to confess that I have been bleeding from my anus for quite some time now”, Mr Anayo narrates ordeal.
This has been one of my closely guarded secrets until recently when I remembered a Nnewi adage that “if an ailment does not hide itself, it should not be hidden”.
I had to open up to Mrs Kada who has become a friend of mine by accident.
I had just finished using the convenience at the Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja Lagos and re-entered the conference room when Mrs Kada, who I guess was about 55 years old, told me that “it seems your trousers were stained in the middle”.
I was wearing a tight-fitted white brocade. Though I was embarrassed, I was not prepared for her follow up questions.
“Mr Nwosu, it seems you have some kind of bleeding most especially after doing the hard one in the toilet?” She said with eyes laden with the trust I had only seen in the eyes of Mama Obiora, my mother.
Mrs Kada and I could not continue the conversation because the facilitator of the training had just started a new topic and demanded our attention.
Bleeding from my anus started the very week I was promoted to the rank of Assistant General Manager (AGM) in a bank about 7 years ago. It started that very week I had just taken delivery of my brand new Toyota Prado SUV and 27-KVA generator from my employers as status entitlements. I was so happy that I had arrived. I had made it to the banking elite club.
The euphoria of my new status was to disappear that same Friday night when I went to the toilet.
I have never had haemorrhoids or “pile” all through my adult life.
I went to the toilet in peace and never had to shout or sụọ ude while defecating even the most shaggy or stubborn stump of faeces. It was for me an easy flow. Hence, I never knew what others like Johnbull, my friend, was experiencing that made him start smoking cigar’s elder brother while defecating.
Mine was unique.
I would notice a substantial amount of blood that would scare a Bible believer once I stood up to clean my anus. I was scared because I couldn’t make out the coincidence with my milestone promotion.
“Devil is a liar!” I shouted.
I couldn’t even share my ordeal with my wife.
She had expressed her fears on how close I was becoming with my very wealthy clients. That I had to do, to be effective as a high performing corporate banker. I was required to represent my MD or the bank in their social functions.
I feared my wife would accuse me of having donated my anus to be drilled by some homosexuals amongst the Lagos big boys. Who would blame her when it is believed that big men are evil?
“How can I defend myself when the symptoms just started now I’m seen with the rich, the bad and the ugly?”, I thought, as my confusion increased.
But chelu godu! (just wait!)… How on earth can I ever allow a fellow man scatter my anus because he wants to achieve an orgasm and give me money or fame? My royal anus? The otune of Ikenga Ezenwegbu? (Praising his anus). Mbanụ! (No!) Chukwu ajụ! (God forbid!).
I cannot claim to be a sexual innocent but being a homosexual is a no-no for me.
Na ifea ụmụ nwaanyị na-atọ? (For how sweet women are?)
How can I abandon the sweet man- to-woman intercourse for ị bọ ike nsị? Not me! Not an Nnewi born Prince!
I had to convince myself to visit the Reddington Hospital, Victoria Island, Lagos to see a doctor.
I insisted on seeing a male doctor because I reasoned that the case was a men’s discussion. I was afraid for my life. I was also thinking that “they have finally got me”.
The doctor with a glove in hand and a spatula with a camera rummaged my anus down to my large intestines the way EFCC and CCB were searching for evidence to nail Onnoghen, the Chief Justice of Nigeria.
After the endoscopy, the doctor ruled out cancer or tumour but queried haemorrhoids. He gave me some drugs and recommended that I sit on tepid salted water periodically.
The symptoms subsided to my relief but would return after some time making me believe that the illness has become “ọ bili n’aja ọcha” or that “illness that follows me to my grave”.
Ọ gbarọzi aka! It’s not normal. Someone must be stoking it.
It was after my hospital appointment that I was emboldened to narrate my ordeal to my wife who felt hurt that I adjudged her harshly.
I told her why I didn’t let her know of my menstruation when it first occurred. She queried why I blanked her off from my pain. The resultant beef or quarrel nearly obscured the main issue.
And I apologised. I promised to be more open to her even when I chase another woman. That one started another quarrel.
I didn’t have the opportunity to finish my discussion with Mrs Kada, a senior staff of Bank of Agric. on that day. Something told me that she had more information for me, therefore, I made an effort to meet her to reopen the topic.
“Mr Nwosu, you are okay. Your system is ageing and can no longer tolerate your normal eating habits”, she started as I felt she was trivializing a serious matter.
“I was suffering the same thing until my husband sent me to a hospital in Israel for a second opinion after my Nigerian doctors insisted on a corrective surgery on my anus.
“The Israeli doctors had a different diagnosis. They said that my illness was a lifestyle disease which would disappear once I changed my eating habits”, she said and began to give me her prescriptions and I was diligent in taking notes the way polling agents copied election results at their polling booths.
She asked that I should ensure that I eat oranges with the fibre or garden eggs in the mornings and thereafter take a generous quantity of water before breakfast.
I was also told to cut down on carbohydrates and meat intakes and that if I must eat them I should ensure that I do that with a lot of vegetables. I was told that Ụgụ (pumpkin) and Green (spinach) should be my every food companion.
“Mr Anayo Nwosu, always ensure you don’t sit down for hours at a go. Always get up and walk around. As you sit for hours, you traumatize the veins in your anal area in that common farthing, not even defecating, could make then bleed”, she ended.
Mrs Kada was right. I have been sitting down much longer than long-distance drivers of Dangote trailers. They too complain of this same illness. But my own does not bring out my ọchịlị ike nsị.
What a simple remedy!
It was akin to Elisha’s prescription to a leprous Nehman to “go and bathe seven times in River Jordan”.
So easy and less expensive!
And I have been doing what Mrs Kada told me and I have stopped menstruating.
I had also stylishly apologised to a relation who I suspected to have “jazzed” me with “issue of blood” because I had become a big man in a bank. I apologised to the person via stunning generosity.
Who will blame me for accusing someone of attempting to kill or harm me because I’m succeeding in life? Are our sicknesses and deaths of dear ones natural?
Here in Africa we cast and bind even a natural ailment.
And we die casting and binding.
Real salvation lies in education, science, interdependence, history and open engagement with people of same or different races, creeds or geography.
Meanwhile, Mrs Kada is a Hausa woman married to a Fulani man. She is not Igbo or Biafran. But she has just delivered me.
Discuss your problem with someone today. Damn the possibility that the information may be mismanaged. The gain might outweigh the loss.
I did and I’m better off.
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