Julie is 23, an orphan, and handicapped; she has just one working foot. Her family members were engaged in a fatal car accident at 8; she lost them all, surviving by grace. Julie grew up with her blind grandmother who was diagnosed with diabetes; she doesn't eat the common, easy-to-find, cheap starchy food consumed by the local inhabitants of Ikot Utoh, a slump somewhere in ... continue reading
As a doctor, what is the most shocking thing a patient has ever requested from you? An Egyptian woman insisted that her husband’s sperm be checked, because something was obviously wrong. They were trying to get pregnant, but nothing happened at all. And she wanted that baby. His semen sample turned out to be a bit of a surprise, because it was dead. There was not a single living sperm cell detectable, and it had always been like that, because the man was consequently diagnosed with a rare congenital condition in which patients are infertile from birth. His sperm had always been dead. The suckers never swam. You might wonder why the woman’s question was shocking in the first place. Well, they had three children . And her husband was convinced that he was the biological father of all three of them. His wife, on the other hand, knew only too well that maybe — just maybe — that might not have been the entire naked truth. Because back in Egypt — where they lived when all their childr