KILL THAT CRAVE

KILL THAT CRAVE

I became friends with Joy when I was frequenting the hospital. Joy was an amiable nurse and she can best be described as a nurse’s nurse. Her relationship with her patients was out of this world and that was the most beautiful thing about her. She was like a lamb among wolves.

We live in a community where nurses are not caring, doctors relate with their patients in impersonal manner and the central focus appears to be the financial proceeds of their professional expertise. You can appreciate why the little few who stick tenaciously to the core practice of their various professions distinguish themselves.

On one of my visits to see Joy, I was frustrated with the mannerisms with which a doctor treated a patient so I had to take it up with him. And in his defense, he replied that many patients escape from the hospital and do not fulfill their obligation of paying the hospital bill and because the system was not designed to be a charitable organization, they had to look to their financial interest to ensure sustainability. Sustainability of the healthcare services at the detriment of the human lives they were meant to preserve, protect and serve. I was depressed. I wouldn’t even delve into the numerous lives that have been lost as a result of negligence.

Well, on this fateful day, I decided to pay amiable nurse Joy a visit. We had become friends and I was always looking forward to visiting her in the hospital and watching her from a distance as she treated and nursed her patients back to health.

Nurse Joy was soft spoken and made it a duty to know the names of all her patients. She had an uncanny way of relating with each patient as if they had known all their lives. On that day, I had waited for close to 30 minutes before she concluded with her last patient and came to meet me. But we were not done with exchanging pleasantries when a patient was rushed in. she was pregnant and she was in a critical condition.

Her husband kept running helter-skelter in a frantic effort to ensure that his wife received the necessary urgent medical attention she desperately required. In a quick succession, Nurse Joy started the initial resuscitation exercise. After doing all she could, she wheeled the patient into the theatre and all we could do was to wait for the outcome of the medical procedure.

It took over three hours before they were done and had her wheeled back to the ward.

She had lost her pregnancy.

I cannot describe the pains the couple passed through. The silence between them was so strong you could literally touch the tension in the air, and Nurse Joy was not just devastated, she was an emotional wreck.

“I told her” she lamented “I warned her” she kept lamenting. “she killed the poor baby” she muttered.

It happened that it was their first pregnancy and the cravings were uncontrollable. She attended Antenatal clinic with Viju Milk, doughnut and meatpie, eggroll, chips, spring rolls amongst others. Not up to an hour after masticating them, she called her husband and demanded for shawarma, ice cream and soda. At the end of the first antenatal clinic, she had consumed so many junks that could feed an entire classroom.

You see, the constituents and process of producing most of these junks make them to acquire mutagens, most of which are teratogenic (meaning that they have the ability to cause tumors in a foetus) hence they can result in congenital malformations (don’t mind the big medical jargon, it simply implies that the foetus will not be formed well and so would be damaged) and can lead to spontaneous abortion. This may present as miscarriage during early pregnancies but when the foetus has gotten to an advanced developmental stage, the result might be what happened to the pregnant lady.

Please, no matter how much you crave these sweeties, they should be avoided during pregnancy as much as possible. As a matter of fact, the period of pregnancy is the period that women should feed mostly on natural foods for the health of the baby.

I would not want to see another soul pass through the harrowing experience of the couple I met in that hospital as much as I would rather not see Nurse Joy in such an emotional state anymore. We can with effective will power overcome the crave that may arise when we anticipate and plan for it ahead of time (did I say we? I hope I would not be tongue lashed for this).

I would love nothing more than to see you in good and perfect health. Remember to keep off those sweeties that have the potential to destroy our unborn generation.

Thank you.