My ear, coconut oil and magic leaf (2)

When I set out to dwell on my ear ailment, my motive was simply to draw attention to my health predicament when I sensed that all was not seemingly well with me despite the medical remedies I underwent. That was on the one hand. On the second hand I was to awaken sympathy and feeling for my fellow compatriots who live among us beneath the poverty level and line, and who are incapable of buying drugs for their ailments because of the prohibitive costs of whatever drugs that may be prescribed for them.

In any case, how many of them are capable enough in the real term and definition of their financial capability or capabilities? Under a system such as ours that is so horribly cruel and unjust and corrupt as to curtail and defeat and do away the good deeds and effects of helpers who can assist them as best as they could, all I could discern in the pharmacies and hospital I visited were things wrong, sorrowful and unspeakable.

A number of them requested financial help from me – a fellow sufferer who did not allow his humanity to desert him – to buy medicines that were ineffective, and which they could not even pay for. Were the medicines in circulation genuine? Or were they adulterated as our corrupt system allowed the marketers to do as they pleased?

I am speaking like this because all the drugs I bought to give me relief and cure my ailment failed. They embarrassed me and the physicians who attended to me and prescribed my medicines. Their tides of medical interest and passion sustained my hope when the drugs failed.

In my moments of ruminations I came to what I perceived as this inevitable conclusion: In present day Nigeria corruption is the ruler and inevitable king pin and dictator in the business and market of Western medical pharmaceutics. When my affected ear persistently kept its formation and falling of drops of pus-less, odour-less liquid, what did I do? I resorted to spiritual, and mystical thoughts and prayers for a solution. On more than one or two or three occasions I remembered and hummed quietly the following un-meandering melodic two lines:
“He shall deliver the needy when he crieth,

The poor, and him that hath no helper.”
Where the lines came from I could not (and still cannot) remember, so the source cannot be immediately referenced. All I can inform my readers now is that the melodic two lines contain powerful redeeming spiritual remedy that provided solution(s) that drew my ear from its house of bondage.

As I hummed the lines a discernible shape formed by sequences of notes or musical sounds in the forms of calls and texts from my readers, constant and un-constant ones, flowed to me. I quoted some of them lavishly last Friday in this column. From the reactions or responses one could interpret that my health predicament proved to be some kind of despair to literary theoreticians and critics and a puzzle for social historians and prayer warriors.

In their despair and puzzlement I discerned glaringly their compassion and humanity that pointed to the open sesame of my total healing. And when one of my spiritual and mystical helpers called to offer me spiritual healing, I had no cause to doubt him. Sehaji Jacob Oshodi was as mystically splendid as ever as Professor IBK, Barrister Rotimi-John Alade, Drs. Clement Odia, Albert Onobhayedo, Paul Onomuakpokpo, Professors Sonny Awheafeada, Owojecho Omoha, Omajuwa IghoNatufe, Dan Amadi and Mr. Saint Louis and Excel Rabiu’s fine instruments of aesthetic intelligence have been.

Everything I have said so far leads but to one end: the miracle of God, who actually has been (and is) the author of my column on health challenge and its metamorphosis. I am not the author, God is.

When I said that my earache had healed and was healing, I meant every word of it. Then the anti-biotic drugs and eardrops I was taking were working but not optimally so until some inscrutable phenomenon in the form of a female voice was sent by who else but God (?) to offer me coconut therapy.

How to prepare it was given as exactly how to insert the curative juice into my ailing, sick right ear. When I did not get properly each stage of the preparation of the remedy, my total half who would work out the preparation –steps and -stages and details took over from me the diligent duty of listening to the caller who requested for anonymity here.

To shorten the story, we did as instructed for full seven days. Throughout the day of bright light everything seemed to work out perfectly: no dripping liquid, no feeling of un-wellness, and no sign of discomfiture. But in the night, everything went back (or so it seemed) to point zero.

The temptation to lose faith in God laid claim to my faith in Him. But this was not for long. A dramatic occurrence lashed out at my impatience. Something always must happen to a man of faith before triumph is realised. The ringing in my right ear, and the unusual sensation inside of it must cease and halt themselves. So help me God!

Believe it or not, God, in my impatient or desperate or despairing state, sent me some fish out of water in the person of my boy, a Barrister-at-law, and a researcher into several things outside his primary professional field and line of engagement. He knew of my ailment ab-initio. But he wanted the physicians to finish what they needed to finish before he would step in if there was need for him to do so.

Our family doctor after getting the result of the laboratory swab (test) of my affected ear, confirmed that what my right ear had was not a bacterial, but a fungal infection. The eardrops and pertinent medicines he prescribed for the treatment and effective cure did not do what they were expected to do. My boy took over from there. What did he recommend? Nature’s treatment in the form of a local lily-like leaf everywhere about us. It is common and looks ordinary. But it is a leaf of curative magic, and it is powerfully so.

This very green leaf which I have since christened as tropical (Nigerian) local lilly-pilly. My boy got just one leaf, heated it with a lighter and then squeezed the averagely hot juice dripping from it into the aching ear. That was it. Of course, he did so every morning and evening for three days in the first instance.

The effect was instantaneously instantaneous. Infact, its instantaneity was the instantaneity! Everything, or almost everything, uncanny concerning my aching right ear stopped. I was no longer a half-hearer of things and sounds from my right ear.My hearing was now full and total. It has remained so.

By now my ENT specialist/expert, a retired professor who was out of my orbit had returned. Quickly, I dashed to see him even though my boy advised otherwise. After his examination with his audiometer he gave each ear, each of my beautiful camels, a very clean bill of health. The inner ear was freely free, that is, problem free. The outer ear of my affected camel was inflamed as a result of the fungal infection. His conclusion was that whatever cure from nature I got outside Western medical field was something he could not but extol. However, to subdue the inflammation he prescribed two eardrops. I bought them.

My son objected to my using them. His lilly-pilly would take care of the inflammation which he also saw- in any case, when he was applying it. My young chap was correct. His God-sent fish out of water has proved miraculous. Troy will not fall again. My camels are galloping like buoyant horses. I am fully and fully healed.

Thank you, dear my readers all for your understanding and humanity for the past six or so hefty weeks of my doubts, despair, depression and solitude. And to God, the author, who chose me as the medium of His will to tell this tale, what do I say?
Concluded.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.