Conversion

By Sylvester Youlo, MD

Conversion is a medical suspense that chronicles the life of a surgeon originally from West Africa and a mysterious illness that leaves him paralyzed and muted while living in the United States.
Amos Thompson was born to two poor teenage parents in a forgotten small town in the West African Country of Liberia. However, he gets a lucky break and becomes the first person to ever win a very prestigious and competitive government sponsored scholarship to the only medical school in the country. But his journey and fortune takes him even further to South Africa to complete his training as a Surgeon.
Then tragedy strikes while he is away when both of his parents die of devastating causes, one of them very mysterious. But the grieving Dr. Thompson returns home to the all-important job as President William R. Tolbert’s personal doctor. However, this will only be short-lived as he is forced to flee the country for asylum to the United States because of a coup de tat that results in the execution of the president and most of his cabinet members. Then while working in a McDonald's fast food kitchen as his first job in the United States, his fortune changes when he falls in love with his US government appointed counselor, the beautiful Suzanne, and begins a complete new chapter in his life.
But tragedy strikes again on the graduation day of his elder son when the doctor loses his entire family in a senseless accident. Two months later he experiences what seems like a stroke that paralyzes and renders him mute. But all tests are normal.
That is when the mystery of his illness unfolds in a nursing home, bringing back questions about his life’s journey, the death of his parents, and the real cause of his paralysis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sylvester Youlo, MD
• Release date: Jun 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476277288

Book preview

Chapter One

Lucy, get away from that cart. Go over there and sit down. I am not here today to keep chasing you from my cart all day long. Now sit down!

I recognized the voice. It was always loud and commanding. There were other voices in the background but that voice telling Lucy to sit down had towered over the rest of what the others were discussing or arguing about.

It was the voice of Ms. Betty Olden. Most of the discussion in the background was about scheduling and staffing.

I looked up at my wall clock. The time read 7:30a.m. It was the change of shift. The night shift had just finished and the day shift nurses were taking over. I also remembered, or was reminded, that it was Monday morning.

I knew this because of Ms. Olden’s voice.

Ms. Olden had been off for the past two days. From my experience with how the work schedule was organized, I knew that the nurses where required to work one weekend then took off on the next weekend. Today was Monday and Ms. Olden was back from her weekend off.

She was an African American. A 5’5" middle age heavy set lady with salt and pepper hair, Ms. Olden was the self-appointed supervisor of the nursing unit. My description of her build may be wrong because sometimes I thought that she was not really that big. But her hips and buttocks were so large that it gave her the appearance of an obese person.

But besides her looks, the most recognizable thing about the charged nurse was the way she talked to, and treated the residents. An example was her loud approach to Lucy, one of the many inhabitants of the facility who happened to have end stage dementia.

My name is Amos Thompson. I lived in the Fairview Home for the Aging in Bowie, Maryland. I had been living there for two years seven days when things unraveled. I lived in Room 202A.

Except that it was a large building, looking from the outside, the nursing home looked very homely. It sat on an elevation of 15° relative to the surrounding area. A wire fence that was about 3m tall surrounded it. Just beginning in front of this fence was an ever-green and evenly mowed layer of grass that covered the entire yard. Very few walkways and driveways that led to certain entrances of the building sparingly interrupted the grass. In fact, from what I counted, there were only four walkways and one major driveway that led to the building.

A major side street that turned into the driveway left the main road and entered the grounds of the nursing home into a gate that was never manned and was always open. As this driveway wound through the gate, and reached the front of the main entrance to the building, it turned into a roundabout. This roundabout was roofed, and served as momentary shelter that protected families bringing their frail and often time confused relatives back to the nursing home after a day out.

Fairview was about one block from the main road. I did the mental measurement myself about a year ago. That was after I heard about a drive by shooting. I don’t know why I calculated the distance, I did. That is beside the point.

Where was I?

Oh, the roundabout.

The roundabout was one of the most attractive pieces of decorative décor of the nursing home. The center was covered with carpet grass. Surrounding the carpet grass were about six flowering plants neatly arranged in a circle. In the middle of the circle formed by this arrangement of flowers was an amazing small waterfall with exotic rocks and stones. During the summer, the residents of Fairview wheeled themselves out to bask in the beauty of the small work of art. The scenery was quite splendid to the eyes of even those who did not appreciate such things.

Tasha, what group do you have today? I heard Ms. Olden asked one of the nurses’ assistant.

The nurse assistants were called CNA's or NA’s, short for certified nurses’ assistants. They were the ones who actually did the bulk of the hard work in the facility. In fact, I thought, and sometime argued, that the title was a misnomer. In my opinion, the nurses were assisting the NA’s at Fairview.

For example, the NA’s cleaned, fed, and did many other things for most of the residents. If they were not cleaning and feeding, they were making beds, or giving showers, or fetching a glass of water for this person or that person.

As for the nurses, who they refer to as charged nurses, they passed pills. They carried carts around stocked with medications and handed the pills out to the residents. When they were done, you could easily find them by taking a stroll to the nurses’ station. They sat there, and were you to approach the nurses’ station, you would find them writing. Or sometime they just sat there doing nothing while the NA’s worked. If you were to ask one of them for a meager help, they called on a CAN.

That morning Ms. Olden was apportioning the work for the NA’s.

If we are going to keep five people, I'll still keep Group I until Wednesday, Tasha responded.

Tasha, like Ms Olden, and almost every nurse that worked at the Fairview, was an African American as well. She was in her made 20s. She worked at the facility for two year before I moved there.

From what I learned over the years, she had two kids, a boy and a girl, six and four years old, with two different fathers. She was currently carrying a pregnancy for her ‘new man.’ By the way, she herself did not tell me all that information.

I knew a lot about those working at the nursing home simply by unintentionally listening. One thing that was common at Fairview was how much and how loud the employees talked about friends, other employees, and even the residents. Because of this, all that one needed was a set of physiologically functioning set of ears for to know everyone’s business.

That is how I got to know Tasha very well. But I knew her for other very important reasons.

She was a very nice person. She was one of the few CNA's that would take time and make sure things were done at the pace of the residents that she cared for. Or at least that is what she did for my roommate, Mr. Brooks, and me.

Today we were in Group I and she was going to be helping.

Meanwhile, the conversation, and protest, continued at the nurses’ station as Ms. Olden tried to organize and share the work for the shift.

Trays are up ladies, the loud voice charged nurse called out.

That there was the announcement that breakfast was ready. I looked up at my clock once again and it read eight o'clock. Breakfast was on time.

At Fairview, we were served three meals during the day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In between those meals, a few people who made personal requests, or who families made requests on their behest, also got snacks.

We ate breakfast in our rooms. Those of us that relied on the nurses to help us get dress ate breakfast in bed. The residents that could get themselves ready with little help had a choice to eat breakfast sitting up in a chair.

That right there, reminds me of Mrs. Jane Williams.

Jane was one of those few people that could get themselves ready before breakfast. By 8:00 that morning, I was pretty convinced that she would be up and neatly dressed.

She was the only person that I knew in the entire building who clothing were ironed. And that was no accident.

I found out long time ago that when she was first admitted at Fairview, she would not put on any of her clothing unless they were ironed. Initially she was met with resistance.

No resident was allowed to have their clothing ironed, the told her. It was not plausible. After arguing with the charged nurses for some time, she spoke with Mr. Diggs, the Administrator of the nursing home, insisting that either her clothing be ironed by the facility or else she would ironed them herself. Afraid of putting the facility at risk for a fire, and worse yet losing their certification for promoting an unsafe environment, the administrator gave into her request and began ironing for her.

As I lay in bed that morning, I listened for the sound of footsteps. I could always tell if someone was bringing our breakfast.

I was not listening intently because I was hungry; I rarely ate much of the breakfast. I was listening because I was hoping that breakfast would be served and done with so that I would get help with dressing and transferring into my wheelchair.

I had to be ready and up in my wheelchair before Jane got upstairs at 9:30 a.m.

Been around Jane was one of the few things that I looked forward to each morning since I met her. Last night before leaving for bed, she reminded me that her two daughters would be here with her grandson and granddaughter for their yearly Christmas party. This had been a family event since her children were very young, she told me last year at the same event.

On Christmas day, she told me, she would wake up early and prepare a huge banquet that could feed the entire family and more. Usually at about 10 a.m. they would gather around the large dining table, unfolded and set in the middle of the living room for this event, and ate whilst Christmas songs quietly played in the background.

Even though her daughters had moved out of their home with their husbands years ago, they still returned home with their families on Christmas day each year for the big banquet. Her move to the nursing home, she told me, did not stop my girls from continuing our tradition.

We would be using the Multipurpose Room for the Christmas banquet.

Chapter Two

I heard the footsteps walking down the hall. It sounded as if it was only one person coming to pass the trays. I knew from the loud conversation earlier that we would have five CNA's working with us. If everybody hands were on deck, I thought, the breakfast would be served early and then my roommate and I would be up and ready for the Christmas banquet.

Good morning Mr. Thompson. Tasha greeted me.

I looked up at her and that uncontrollable