IT IS surprising that we have never cultivated a policy of health consciousness that enveloped moving exhibits, translating the values of fruits, vegetables of all kinds and the benefits and dangers of meats into simplified wall posters for kitchens and snackettes. There are simple ailments that we mention in passing conversation that we know so little about. Years ago, as a bachelor, I had a good friend called ‘Bone-Dry Parker,’ a name that was attributed to him because of the dry coconuts he sold. He has since passed on.
There was this young man who did odds-and-ends jobs, always with a smile on his face.
JAUNDICE AND ‘BITTERS’
After not seeing him for a while, I enquired from Parker where this youngster was; Parker replied that he had died. Seems that he was afflicted by jaundice, and was advised to drink ‘bitters’; it killed him.
I thought at the time that is what you did when you had jaundice; no one had ever told me or the young man’s adviser otherwise.
Years later, I myself developed jaundice; Dr Hughley Hanoman was my doctor. I was in hospital for eight to 10 days, and there I learnt all I had to know about that condition.
Do not use anything fatty, nor any ‘corilla bitters’; use jam on toast bread, and absolutely no eggs or pepperpot etc. I also stopped eating on the road. I was warned that a good source of jaundice is “recycled food”; food that wasn’t sold a day or two before; wasn’t properly stored; and that rats and roaches had urinated on.
My mother had 12 children; two didn’t make it, but 10 of us are alive. During the years I spent with her, I learnt that when fathering children, to let their mother[s] use lots of papaya and avocado pear so as to cleanse the skin of the babies before they’re born. I never researched the science, but it seems to be true so far.
I’ve seen avocado plastered on faces as a beauty treatment; eating it would be even more acute science, I’m positive.
‘BUSH MEDICINE’
In 2013, I bought what I considered an important local publication at Austin’s called, ‘USES OF MEDICAL PLANTS IN GUYANA,’ published by the Evergreen Club. This booklet was a first of its kind, from my experience, on local ‘Bush Medicine’. And though I’m not qualified to offer a critique on its content, I do recognise many of the plants catalogued. And though I was unaware of their scientific names, it is an interesting publication nevertheless.
What I do lament, however, is that the format of the presentation did not do justice to its content. But as a self-publisher, I well understand the financial constraints that would have placed restrictions on pages that should have had professionally done photographs or renderings of plants in full colour, rather than skewed illustrations that did not do display justice because of the space available.
We know very little of some of the simplest ailments that affect us; and as for the argument on how much sleep we need, most young men are misguided by adult males who subcribe to an adage I’ve coined over the years, which is that ‘Stupidity and wickedness also grow old’.
SLEEP DEPRIVATION
The fact of the matter is that the old argument that when you’re young, you need only four to five hours of sleep per day simply does not hold water! How many young people have crashed, fatally, because of sleep deprivation.
I was at the Kuru Kuru College in its formative years when, while in a ‘Jeep’ heading there from Linden one night, a hectic argument ensued about the winner of the Linden Beauty Pageant, whose brother, ‘Sears’, worked at the college.
The next we knew was that one minute we were talking; the next we were awakening from a deep sleep that had overcome us like magic, and the ‘Jeep’ was swerving on the then lonely highway of its own accord.
Luckily, the driver was able to take a firm hold of the wheel, and edge the ‘Jeep’ into the brush for a necessary ‘five’. This was around 23:00hrs. When we finally awoke, the sky was grey! We were both teenagers who hadn’t slept for more than seven hours in two days. And had it been the Linden highway of today, we most likely would have been dead. So much for the fictional abilities of youth!
NOTHING BUT WATER
We are also unaware of a simple thirst-quenching source. I have a friend, a former paramilitary officer, who developed a serious condition over the past few years. He confessed to me that for the longest while, he’s been slaking his thirst with Coca Cola.
But he of all people should know better, because, for many years, one of the dictates of his military career was that his canteen was one of his best friends; that water is a matter of life and death.
Nothing else supplements water; not beers, beverages or energy drinks. None can intercept dehydration but clean water.
I am yet to understand how my colleague, Dr. Desrey Fox, was wrongly diagnosed and allowed to die.
The Public Hospital has to be rehabilitated; too many horror stories emerge from that facility, and it’s the only destination for the 95% of cash-strapped Guyanese.
How can someone who has not passed English, Human Biology and Human and Social Biology become a nurse? Are the Cuba scholarship recipients returning as interns or doctors?
Sources in the medical field doubt the latter. Enormous problems like this cannot be fixed by the click of a finger, but the Ministry of Public Health needs to have an edu-tainment programme to help us not end up at any medical facility, with facts about whether cucumber and lemon juice actually help with hypertension.
Don’t assume that we know! And now you know that we don’t, don’t leave us in the dark!