Hello there,

It’s a brand new week. First of all, Eid Mubarak to all Muslim faithful out there. I like to think that you have had a great Sallah. For us in Nigeria, we are balling since it’s a parte after parte kinda new week with a line up of holidays and jolly activities inside one big HOLIDAY! There is Sallah break, Children’s day, NYSC POP, Democracy day…and of course the compulsory covid-19 lockdown break across most states of the Federation. So it’s happy holidays to every one of us.hehe.

Oh well, to the reason for today’s topic, I find it somewhat worrisome when I come across social media posts that seek to find medical solutions to obvious medical problems, online. Ever so often I see posts on say Facebook that goes, “please hide my identity. My baby has some type of rash and I have applied XYZ with no luck, please mummies what can I do to clear it? Help a sister” and almost always they end it with “please no insults.”

You have probably come across similar or even worse posts. My biggest worry always stems from the fact that firstly, with kids no one should even have to risk Facebook or internet diagnosis and/or treatment in the first place. Paediatric cases hardly thrive on trial and error medication.

Secondly, these mummies, and sometimes daddies too, don’t they get confused at the many different solutions peddled before them? I mean, for the post above you would get answers ranging from “rub the baby native chalk… give him/her agbo to drink… bathe with cold water henceforth… take her to those Yoruba women that sell herbs they will prescribe the one that you can rub and drink… burst the rash open then mix the water with camphor and rub on baby’s head… use lime and ginger to bathe… madam dry your baby under sun then afterwards take off diaper and rub Vaseline mixed with Indian hemp… please take her to a chemist they will mix kill and dry for you” …then you will suddenly sight a lone comment struggling to survive that says “madam take that child to the hospital” and perhaps another, “baby tribotan ma.”

Aha! Have you seen the ones for stooling and vomiting? Facebook doctors will prescribe all sorts for anonymous poster “please give him freshly squeezed scent leaf… no, bitterleaf works faster… wait, use lime ooo, grate a bit of the zest into it… squeeze his bathing soap and shove it down his anus jor… you must see “take child to the hospital somewhere” in the comments, it is usually always drowning. Diarrhoea that can kill the child even before the parent recovers from the confusion of different “solutions” offered on Facebook and decides he or she is ready to go with an option. My question is why do people do this? Which advice amongst the lot will the parent be able to choose from?

Okay enough, actually, today I decided to read randomly across the social media and I stumbled on an interesting post in one group I follow on Facebook. The poster was confused as usual, the garlic she shoved into her vagina had wandered away and lost its focus. The thing disappeared. Now she was worried and needed solution. I would love to think it melted away but my friend Dorathy believes otherwise. She says it was probably waiting for manual excavation once it finishes its job as a sanitizer. Hehehe.

Trust the Facebook doctors, ever ready to dole out generous advice, mostly hilarious but then it made me reflect on the need to share this message. As I rummaged through the barrage of solutions, I realised one thing, a lot of us women have relocated our kitchens. When it is not garlic we are stuffing in there it is cooking with boiling water or onion to kill germs, next we could be adding salt and seasoning. When we are not cooking away infections we are installing beads and pearls and crystals and tightening vessels and weapons – we just must be fixing something there sha. I am worried.

There is little we need to maintain our reproductive organs as women. The medical experts have repeatedly told us that the vagina is self-cleansing and does not need too much drama. Let us allow it rest too.

Meanwhile, there are those who swear by these alternatives especially herbs. The argument usually advanced is that our forebears used same and they recovered from whatever ailments. They may be correct. I am not a herbalist neither am I a fan of anything not prescribed by a trained medical practitioner for the treatment of ailments. I believe if you have tooth ache, see a dentist, even if extraction is the only remedy, the dentist knows why. If your obgyn suggests Csection, please go ahead, he knows why. If your mental health therapist suggests medication, please take it, he knows why. Not everytime we do trial and error.

I was participant at a seminar sometime in August of 2019 and the medical doctor who handled the health talk segment made a remarkable comment when posed with the question above, and which I find apt for responding whenever I am confronted with similar analysis.

He had said while it may be true that our forebears used herbs to treat themselves and our medications are mostly produced from herbs, what is certain is that some of these people did not also know that while one thing was being cured another was being damaged. This is because a lot of our herbs have not been refined and as such proper dosage cannot be ascertained. So the likelihood of using a particular herb to cure maybe a fever can lead to damage of an internal organ.

I remember once when I watched a baby die on the bed next to where my son was admitted. It was a pathetic sight. What was even sadder was the fact that the death was purely avoidable. The parents who got tired of handling their very sick child at home at the orders of an untrained doctor who also extorted unimaginable sums of money from them and would later refer them to the hospital when the child became too sick, ended up blaming the doctor for not resuscitating their child. It was a painful sight. It was also very shocking. The native doctor who treated them earlier was equally standing there, blaming them for not knowing when to seek professional help. This life is not just balanced at all.

If you want medical lecture, please go to the hospital. If you want to find a Facebook doctor because this post is titled so, please shift from my face first, go to the hospital, the real Facebook doctors work there. Hahaha.

Bottom line of this is simple, please, if you have medical concerns it is always safest to see a doctor. Leave Facebook and social media platforms generally, alone, these are not hospitals. The chances are slim for a “real” doctor to see and advice you properly on the social media. Go to a trained healthcare professional with your complaints.

Self-medication has almost always led to irreversible problems. If you still want to be heady because your ancestors used that route, please leave your innocent children out of it, these babies are helpless. Help them to stay alive. Then for the aunties who are cooking…hehe, abeg, your food don done ehn. It haff do.

Good evening darlings.

PYmusings

May, 2020