Clinic matters

As I write my piece this week, the title of the popular sitcom I once watched on TV, ‘Clinic Matters’ produced by Paul Igwe, readily comes to mind. Little wonder why I have chosen to title this piece after it.‘Clinic Matters’ is a comedy series that dramatises the everyday experience of a busy doctor, his committed Nurses and their different patients with the numerous patients who pass through their clinics on a daily basis. The doctor and his nurses including the patients usually exhibit strange attitudes.  The nurses, especially, derive pleasure in gossiping about their patients and fellow nurses who some time are accused of an affair with either the doctor of patient.The attendance humour from the manner of gossip makes Clinic Matters interesting to watch since its debut in 2008. I understand that it is very popular in other African countries like Kenya, Ghana and Uganda. Such is the power of gossip. For instance

 in Ghana, the programme is rocking the airwaves so much that television houses have made billboards at several junctions advertising it.To make this piece a bit more interesting, maybe I should also flashback on a rumour that rocked the exit of Amanda Ebeye, who used to play Nurse Abigail from the set of the sitcom, after all the element of gossip in the show makes it interesting. Also, Franca Ogochukwu, the nice, quarrel-settling nurse Theresa stopped featuring for a while. The exit of both Ebeye and Ogochuchuwu was traced to a quarrel between the crew and its producer, leading to the exit of the duo. But Igwe debunked the rumour as unfounded and baseless. “It is not true that I had any issue with the Clinic Matters crew,” he was quoted as saying. “It is just that Amanda Ebeye, who plays Nurse Abigail got a better offer than what we could afford, and she left while Ogochukwu is on maternity leave.”Enough of that gossip and let’s get back to

 the business of gossip at clinics. I had an encounter at a famous hospital here in Lagos some days back and I could not help but admire the courage of nurses, doctors and their patients. While the nurses on the set of ‘Clinic Matters’ gossiped about their patients and themselves, the ones at the clinic I was, simply talked about themselves and other feminine issues relating to their patients since we were all women. For me, the gossip was healthy and it was an open one which bothered on womanhood, the pains of being a woman. The fact that just some years ago, we were free women who had nothing to worry about who we are until womanhood began to throw many challenges our way. We could not help but accept them and move on with our lives. They are just the problems that come with the joys of motherhood.I cannot just help but ponder over being wheeled from the labour room to the theatre after experiencing the pain of labour to have a feel of the

 surgeon’s knife. That’s the experience of one of the women I spoke with. Days after undergoing surgery and being delivered of a cute baby boy, she still had a urinary bag tied around her waist. She was undergoing bladder training!  She was on the bed cuddling her new born while her urine bag hung somewhere beside her bed. Another woman in the same room was also wheeled in from the theatre with drip hanging on her left arm. She lay unconscious for two days without food. It was the third day that she was fed with warm water by a nurse. The quantity of the water was even measured! After regaining her consciousness, she just lay in bed watching other patients ate while she lay hungry. Her wound had to heal before she could eat the nurse told us. The cases were just too many. Women are going through many things which may not be known until you get to the clinic.But what is amazing is the fact that you have doctors and surgeons who patiently listen to the

 complaints of their patients. They see it as a part of their duty to chat up their patients even when they know they could be at a point of no return while in the theatre. They just want to make sure they are psychologically fit and put their patient’s mind at rest as they entrust their lives into the surgeon’s hands. It’s not an easy journey for the women I saw at the clinic that day, I believe, but they just must answer to nature’s duty call!

FUNKE OSAE-BROWN