Life is a journey: Life it - Part 129

Franz Kleve looked at me, trying to figure out what he saw under my left eye. He was shy to come out and ask me. Finally, he did, wanting to know: „I can see something...under your left eye. I mean, the left bag under your eye is different from the right. Not really visible...but something seems to be there.“

The rest of the group checked out my left eye, especially the bag and spotted a mark. I lifted my glasses so they could see better. They all agreed it was hard to spot, but there was something unusual. I laughed at them as they apologised out of nowhere.

„You know,“ I started cautiously to say, remembering the many who went before me on this matter and continued, “at the end of 2025 under my left eye something small grew. At first I thought it was some form of pimple, a kind of Akne which happens to people from time to time. The following year, in spring 2026, trying to squeeze it, I realised it was not a pimple at all. Looking in the mirror, I spotted something was not right very unusual. Students of mine at that time asked me what was growing under my left eye, and I constantly brushed it off as nothing special. Finally, I consulted my GP and asked her to have a closer look at it. With confidence, she diagnosed it as a Basaliom, a white cancer. I still did not take it seriously, assuming it would disappear by itself eventually. She said I would have to see a specialist, a dermatologist, and I did. He confirmed and said only an operation would solve my problem. Now you must know I have friends who are medical doctors, telling them I love them as friends, but please, they should stay away from me as doctors. Doctors make me sick and increase my blood pressure, even though their job is to heal people. Anyway, imagining going into a hospital for treatment while my last hospitalisation was more than forty years earlier was unimaginable to me.

It took me a while to realise that the way to undergo surgery was the only option for me, especially as the Basaliom grew and grew very visible for anyone to see and ask secret questions. My wife and I visited the UKE, the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, for consultation. Two most beautiful young female doctors examined my whole body in all possible corners and were not able to find signs of black cancer or any other spot on and in my skin except the one below my left eye. They took a blood test, and it confirmed their examination results. I was relieved only to have white cancer at one particular spot on my body. They scheduled an operation day, which was delayed once due to emergency calls on them. Eventually it was my turn to turn myself in. After the administrative work was completed, I was asked to wait in the waiting section to be called for my turn. More and more people showed up, waiting patiently like me for the next steps. Some patients with freshly operated wounds and bandages walked up and down the corridor. The male and female nurses were busy calling people to their rooms or for operation one floor below in house 14 Dermatologie.

My name was called, and I was asked, with another patient, to follow the young nurse to the operation area on the first floor of the building. I sat apart from the other patient, staring at two doors with the sign Operation Room, waiting until you will be called. I was the second patient to be called in. While waiting, I was astonishingly calm, as I was expecting to freak out and faint. There was so much peace in me, like in church when listening to the sermon of my prophet. While waiting, I had sent a message to Prophet Dr Emmanuel Badu Kobi for prayers, and he answered me to speak peace into my situation. So it was. The call came for me to enter Operation Room 2. I was greeted by a young nurse, who asked me to take off my shirt and singlet but to keep on my trousers and shoes. She asked me to lie down on the operation table with my head a bit up. A young, tall doctor entered the room, Dr Tegtmeier, who was also a plastic surgeon. Very friendly with a warm voice, he greeted me through his blue operation mask, sitting on his chair by my side, asking me whether he should explain the procedure while working on my Basaliom, and I declined, not wanting to fan my fears. The beautiful doctors who had examined me weeks before promised I would get an injection to make me calm but not sleepy. Now Dr Tegtmeier said the injection he would give would make my eye swell a bit, and after he had injected me three times, indeed my eye got swollen. He put a blue cloth on my head and started to cut the Basaliom bit by bit. I did not feel anything. To make me feel comfortable, Dr Tegtmeier engaged me in a conversation. We talked about Ghana, Africa and cocoa and chocolate business, and even though he was more of a coffee lover than a chocolate enthusiast, he was most interested to hear my side of the story. Before he said the job was done for the day, just ten minutes after he had started, I asked him what I always ask new students: how to define a state. Getting up from the operation table and explaining how to define a state, his boss entered the room, and we started discussing whether a colony is a state or a country, as the state power is with the colonial master. The boss mentioned Gandhi and India, for which reason a colony is also a state, which I was not able to argue against, as time was not on our side, as the next patient was already waiting.

Back on the ward on the second floor, I was assigned to room 621 with a man from Cuxhaven already in his bed. His operation was undertaken the day before. He had black cancer which had spread in his body. It was not his first time in UKE. Months before, the doctors had saved his life by constructing a new vein for him. While shopping, an impulse had made him buy three cans of energy drink, something he would normally not buy. At home, drinking the first-ever energy drink, he felt dizzy calling for an ambulance. It was found out that one vein had grown exceptionally large, about to burst and kill him. The energy drink literally saved his life. Now he was admitted again for black cancer underneath his right foot, and it was painful for him. He asked for a liquid painkiller and was attached to the bottle above his head. The doctors had to cut four centimetres of his skin almost down to his bones. The next day, they would ask him to return the following week to continue the procedure, possibly having to take skin from a spot of his body and patch his foot up. He was only 53 years old. A very friendly single man with no wife or children. An industrial designer showing me on his mobile phone the work he was doing for a company in Cuxhaven. We talked about my passion for Ghana cocoa and chocolate. He asked me not to speak out too much about it but keep my secrets to myself until the time comes. The Apple Watch around his left wrist could listen to any word we said. I thought he was overstating the danger that might be around us, but I knew to keep my secrets to myself, which even my wife did not know about when it comes to chocolate. We had the most enlightening conversation, and talking to him made me remember ideas for the chocolate business I thought I had long forgotten. He helped me to be crystal clear about the best way to sell chocolate and the various steps needed to be taken to make it a success story not only for myself but for Ghana as a country. The new mark under my left eye would be a reminder of this most wonderful moment of my life.

   Comments0