Dr. Wanye arrives on Ghanaian time, two hours after we take breakfast near the clinic in Karaga. It is 10:30 Am when I see him first, strolling in black loafers and a tucked oxford toward the plastic chairs, his bowling ball head sprayed with morning light and thin arteries of sweat.
“Hello, hello, good to see you again,” he greets. The doctor extends a gentle, steadied hand hip-height and relieves our group from visual acuity tests, a full, symmetric smile preserved as he rotates and shakes, rotates and shakes. For a man of his responsibility—he is the only ophthalmologist for the 2 million people in the Northern Region of Ghana- he exudes a seasoned serenity, as though he has already rehearsed the surgical cases for the day and trusts his hands to cut and hold and tie mindlessly into the darker hours of the evening. There are 30 something surgeries to be performed today, 30 more the following day, and an overflow to be dammed up on Sunday when the stragglers and last-minute consenters rush to reintroduce their eyes to vision. Dr. Wanye performs cataract surgeries with a swift, itinerant motor, incising a dense organ of colorful gowns and sweet, leathery faces one after the other, cleaning the next patient’s eye before the previous one has left the theater.
Surgeons are often conjured up to be the doctor kings of the healthcare profession. Publicly perceived, they are the smartest, fiercest, most unshakeable healers we have, thoroughly adorned with rafts of instruments and machines and supporting staff to carry out our most sacred of medical rituals: the operation. But this is not Wanye, poised over a microscope with surgical scissors, clipping his eigteenth conjunctiva of the day, then slicing through to the sclerotic tissue and cracking the anterior chamber of a glazy cataract, only to slide in a limpid lens the size of a snowflake. He talks with the single nurse about the punctuality (or lackthere) of lunch and occasionally voices a staggered narration of the procedure. “Usually...the iris sags downward in the eye...and it opens up the incision...further...so that we can reach the anterior chamber with...relative ease.” Over and over, he cleans and clips and slices and injects and implants and sutures. No barking at frantic nurses for pharmaceutical x or instrument y, no spurting blood soiling his scrubs or disposable mask, and there is no monitor pealing out like a dial tone when the phone drops off the hook (and it never does in our operating room).
Wanye is a medical soldier, a factory physician even, not a cowboy. He has no interest in such dramatics. Atul Gawande once observed that the best surgeons are not the most naturally gifted or deeply ambitious, but rather the best versed in there respective operations. It’s not about genius, Gawande explains, it’s about who is boneheaded enough to practice the same thing over and over and over again until it becomes a fluid recitation, an indelible routine, a habit of the body as automatic and impregnable as breathing. Sometimes hospitals here lose power and running water; Wanye continues to operate with a flashlight illuminating the field and whatever bottled water he can scrounge for. His repertoire is that far engrained. As a lowly, aspiring physician, it is humbling and awe-inspiring to witness a master in his element, flexing the muscles of his craft with the grace and eminent prowess of an acclaimed musician or headlining athlete. Being inches away from the patient’s pupil, like a black umbrella against a fresh white cloud, I was entranced—with the surgery, with the anticipated result, with my own excitement crystallizing as the surgeries went on and on. “We are almost ready to call it a day,” Dr. Wanye says, 28 cataracts deep and kicks a pitch of blood-smudged cotton near his feet. We have 30 more surgeries tomorrow, 30 more practices to add beneath the doctor’s belt, and, most importantly, 30 more patients who will reunite with sight.
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