i have deliberately hesitated to post this for some time now, principally for two reasons: i posted something about my impending birthday and asked other TIGers who share the same birthday with me to get in touch; and i have been savouring the gretatest birthday gift i could ever imagne i could get.
to start with, my birthday was on the 16th of february, and though i do not often remember my birthdays, i was conscoius of this particularl one.
let me get you into some background infornation first. see, i work in a location that's 7 hours from where my wife residesand she gave birth to baby girl on 17 november 2004. ofcourse, we were very joyous. i got to see them 6 days later, stayed three days and went back to work. i saw them again when the baby was about 30days old had a wondeful time with my her. she has a way of lying in the space within my arm and my chest at night. even though she does not sleep at nights, whenever am around she sleeps comfortably in the litle space i have since discovered she likes. hopwever, this was when my wife pointed out something in our baby's eyes. we took her to an eye specialist who confirmed she has cataract in the two eyes and had to be operated on before she gets to be three months old.
now, i am just a civil servant in nigeria and my wife just got out of university, yet to get work and i knew this is gong to be expensive and so we prepared ourselves for some real hards time in order to save and get enough money for the operation. i went back to my place of work and three days later, my wife calls and say that some other doctor advised we take her out of the country to the UK for the operation as the only option. i panicked. where am i gong to get that kind of money. we started prayng hard and i got in touch with my siblings in the UK who readily signified their willingness to assist. now, even if i get the money eventually, my baby was just days away from being three months old, and the visa application process might take quiote a while. i told my wife we should start looking for other options. the hospitals that could possibly handle it were the government hospitals, and unfortunately the doctors there were on industrial action and not workng. we got preliminary tests done though. and then we were told of the national eye hospital which was about another 8 hours away from my wife's location. we had no option as there were no conecting flights. i sent her money and they left. i wanted very much to be with them, but i had to stay at work to ensure that my salary goes on as i cold not obtain necesaary leave from work. at the palce she was told that they could not handle it, due to her age. we were then advised to go to another private hospital which is approximately another 9 hours from where they were. by this time i was almost a nervous wreck. but thankfully, there was a connecting flight, and also by this time my family members had been able to contribute quite a considerable sum of money for me. therefore my wife and kid went to the private clinic by air: an hour. at the clinic, we had to pay an approximate of 250 thousand naira eventually and the operation was to be done on february 15. on that day, the doctor suddenly remembered he had an appointment that he could not postpone, and so told my wife to come th next day for the oeration. on the morning of the 16th, i got a call from my wife telling me that the operation had been done and that it was successful.. now what better birthday present could i possibly ask for again? my mothr called me early that day wishing me a memorable birthday and one of my sisters-in-law called telling me that she knows the only birthday gift i could only be praying for is a successful operation on my baby. was she right?!!!
now don't you agree with me that i had the greatest birthday gift of my life yet?