Assist Fellow Men In Tangible Ways. Don't Just Ask Them To "pray About It"!

Opening a store window tasked my mental faculties more than I had expected....yet no solution until Miss X offered to assist. Almost like a rat, she had wriggled her tiny 10-year frame in between the stacks of loads....and in a split second had gotten to this window, opened it, and wriggled back out! My "thank you" was instantaneous! All my plans....and deft calculations...about how to move all that junk aside to reach that window....dwarfed by this small girl just because her body is SMALLER than mine? Then I remembered the Yoruba proverb that alludes to the fact that help can come from the young and the not so young...and the form of help you receive from me may differ from the one you render to me.... She was pro-active. She did not merely admonish me to "pray about it"!

My neighbour's daughter had come down with malaria. After a failed attempt at using herbs, they had approached me for help. I did not ask her to "pray" about it. I conducted a brief questioning and examination, came up with a diagnosis, and wrote a prescription. Her elder sister returned empty-handed, saying that the prescribed drug was unavailable at the nearby chemist shop. I knew such "chemist" shops are usually manned by illiterate husslers....so I educated her on that fact and how to locate generic names in smaller prints under the brand names. I wanted Arthemeter and Lumefantrine. She refused when I asked her to go back. She still refused when I offered to accompany her. Her mother offered to go with me.....to another chemist shop. The shop keeper briefly glanced at the prescription and promptly announced that "the medicine no dey!'. I simply approached his shelves, read off the generic names of the drugs displayed and isolated the one I needed for the patient. We payed. Left. The ill girl used the drugs as I painstakingly instructed. The next day, her parents thanked me for the "immediate relief the medicine gave".

Two decades ago, a relation approached me in a pitiable state. His condition required a surgery. I got the procedure performed, and nursed him to health.

Years later, he bore many sons, his restored virility a sure testimony to the success of his earlier surgery. His son....in fact two successive sons....had congenital hernias and undescended testes. I operated them. I resisted the pressure (by the assisting colleague) to excise one particular testis that seemed impossible to mobilize. I saved that testis...Revving up all my faculties, I brought smiles to the parents' faces.

Toxoplasmosis is not a common diagnosis....and its ocular manifestations are not to be trifled with! So, when a "sister" places an urgent call to you as a doctor, you firmly warn her not to see an "optician".....but Dr Y, a renowned ophthalmologist. She complains of "curtain vision" and you think it is vitreous hemorrhage, and write a referral to that effect. Dr Y accepts the case, orders tests and the results vindicate you that you acted right by this referral.....helping to save that eye!

I have written about a colleague who literally slept in my clinic just that I might connect him to honest sellers of land. He had just been served a demolition notice on his multi-storey hospital. Naively, I obliged him knowing fully well that the hospital he would erect near me would dwarf mine. He stopped picking my calls as soon I started having challenges in my practice...long before he builds that exotic hospital. One, he failed to reciprocate my "good" gesture before I even broached such reciprocity. Two, he saw a natural opportunity to key into my ruin....and he took it!

The admonitions I receive from this neighbour....and these relations....and this colleague....to pray on issues they so clearly know they can offer physical....tangible....help know no bounds! It is a horrifying....if not annoying....insult on my intelligence as these "Christians" keep repeating...."accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour".....as if they now belong to a category of parrots!

Asking people to "go and pray" about a problem they present to you....as a coy way of avoiding to offer help to them is devilish!

It is an abuse of the Holy Books and the Scriptures!

Perhaps it is high time I also stated telling people to "go and pray" about problems that are quite within my grasp to solve.

I have shown people love as a way of training them to show love....but they persist in their wicked ways.

Perhaps a liberal dose of their own medicine deftly given to them would jolt them to reality....and reawaken their humanity.

Nobody can possibly bear his crosses alone....without a helping hand....

The only problem I have with those averse to offering help is their ready request for help....and the lousy manner they prostrate on the floor to get it....as if they are a bunch of reptiles!

My point is clear....
If you cannot give help, don't seek it!
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.

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Articles by Tosin Akindele