Appointments to celebration and chemotherapy

Looking back at things

I do not remember much about my second session of chemotherapy twelve years ago. It was however, my third visit to the hospital after I was discharged 17 days before. The first was to take gifts to the nurses who tended me over my 18-night stay. The second was the Friday before what became my every 3-week chemotherapy session, it was for blood tests to determine how I was tolerating chemotherapy.

Blog - A second course of chemotherapy

That day had so much going on, just as it was my father’s 70^th birthday, to which I could contribute nothing, I was basically fighting for my life not to talk of my livelihood that was not close to my consideration at the time.

Blog - 70 - A man of integrity planted like a tree of life

The stories we are gifted

Weeks before I had already said the celebrations should go ahead in Nigeria rather than have my situation in faraway Netherlands sour the occasion. I have been blessed and quite fortunate to be able to do a lot more for my father’s 80^th birthday that was celebrated in the way he wanted things to be.

These memories signify a sense of gratitude that old times of great infirmity and adversity have become stories of life on which to reflect on how grace and favour carries you through things which at the onset you never think you have either the wherewithal or capacity for. You look back in wonder at what stories you have been given to tell, uniquely yours alone. I am thankful.

Blogs - The Cancer Tales (2009)