Lymphoma: far from the ‘belu belu’ razor sharp curved knife

Every September 15, reminds me of the neighbourhood surgeon of the 1950s and 1960s and his dangerous but seemingly unblemished surgical prowess. Mothers and fathers invited him to remove enlarged lymph nodes from the necks and armpits of their children and drooping tonsils from their mouths. The Yorubas call a swollen or drooping tonsil “BELU BELU” . They believed contents of the swellings were poisnous enough to kill anyone who swallowed them if the “belu belu” bursts. So, they invited home any mallam who specialised in the art of surgical removal of an infected tonsil. I witnessed some of these surgeries between the ages of nine and 10, but escaped them. Often, the local surgeons were malams from the north of Nigeria. They came in with unsterilised curved, sharp knives and other implements. The children who were to be operated upon were tricked indoor and forced down by about three hefty men. One sat behind him or her, and, with hefty muscular arms, arrested the child and tightly bound the young one’s body to his own. Another man steadied the head which was, also, under arrest. Finally, the third man sat on the child’s legs to ensure they did not move during the operation. The man who had the child’s head manipulated the cheeks to force the mouth open. Before these procedures, the mother and other females were forced out of the room. Outside, the women paraded the environment, praying or crying. The children who saw their sibling or playmate abducted and knew what was going on fled to safety. The native surgeon pressed down the tongue of the child with a wooden or bamboo appliance, and probed the distended inflamed tonsil or a drooping one with his knife to the root, on the plate of the upper jaw. He strikes. And down comes the infected organ, which is a member of the immune system of the body. Blood erupts. The surgeon’s aids force the patient’s head down and warns him to not swallow the blood or the excised tissue. He spits all out. He is given plenty of water to rinse his mouth and rid himself of remnants of the dismembered parts of his body. His mother is summoned into the “theatre” which often times was the family’s single room tenancy. Her job was to immediately provide hot peppered soup she had been advised to keep on stand by. The patient will snack on it all day or for several hours until the post surgical bleeding was arrested!

Procedures for removing enlarged lymph nodes in the neck and armpit were similar except that the patient’s lot was not hot peppered soup plastered on open knife wound. I do not know the mechanism for stopping bleeding in these surgeries, but they were equally dangerous procedures in which blood vessels and muscles were often exposed. I do not recall now if the patients fell ill afterwards from infections or anyone passed as a consequence.

My childhood memories were lit up by announcements that  September 15, 2025 was yet another global Lymphoma Day.

Lymphoma is what medicine calls a dangerous disease which may cause some of this swellings in the neck, armpits and groin which the crude medicine men of those days treated according to their limited understanding of the construction of the body and of how it works. Their “patients” probably survived because their conditions were not full blown Lymphoma. I told Udeme Edet James that she was a lucky girl in the 1990s when her father, a palm wine tapper and Brewer of local gin, ogogoro used razor blade incisions on growths or swellings in her armpits and swellings below the ear lobe to aspirate through finger pressure whatever pus and fluid they haboured. She is from Ekwere Itam, near Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. She grew up in a culture in which children and adults alike often developed swellings around the neck which, today, are known as MUMPmumps. Pharmaceutical drugs prescribed by doctors often did not help the sufferers much. They recovered more, as I witnessed a case weeks ago, on a therapy of White Cocoyam meal at a special ceremony beside a plantain plant.

Lymphoma

As it is known today, lymphoma is a cancer in the Lymphatic System, a part of the Immune System. That is why surviving it may be difficult because it weakens the immune system which is meant to destroy it. It is like the bombardment of a military defence headquarters!

To make a challenged person appreciate what is going on, I often play around the question: What is the colour of blood? I guess you too would say it is “RED”. Absolutely, the colour of blood may not be RED. It only appears so because red blood cells are plentiful in what we call blood and , therefore, give it its red colour. What gives the red blood cell its red colour is haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment of red blood cells.

Blood, or the River of life as many physicians call it, is the liquid transport system in which are to be found such components as red blood cells, white blood cells, platelet cells, nutrients, hormones, oxygen, antibodies and PLASMA, the liquid portion of blood. Blood circulates in blood vessels such as arteries, capillaries, veins and organs.

Lymphatic System

Side by side with the blood circulatory system is the Lymphatic Circulatory System. This is leading to the realm of theLYMPH, which circulates in the LYMPHATIC system where LYMPHOMA takes place. Many persons know of blood vessels but not of lymphatic vessels.

PLASMA, a pale yellow or straw coloured liquid in the blood circulation which accounts for about 55 per cent of the total volume, separates from the blood and leaks out of the vessels. It leaks into the spaces around the 100 trillion or so cells known as the INTERSTITIAL SPACE, forming the interstitial fluid. Plasma is about 92 per cent water and comprises proteins such as albumin, globulins, fibrinogen, Hormones, nutrients (such as proteins, glucose and lipids). It transports waste products as well. There are as well electrolytes such as potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium etc. Gases such as oxygen , carbon dioxide and nitrogen are in the mix, too. These nutrients diffuse into the cells through various mechanisms. Toxins and wastes from the cells also diffuse from them into the interstitial fluid outside.

The interstitial fluid carries away the wastes and toxins into special cells, the LYMPHATIC CAPILLARIES which take them into primary lymphatic vessels called AFFERENT. The drained waste loaded interstitial fluid is now known as THE LYMPH. The AFFERENT drains into larger lymphatic vessels. In this system are LYMPH NODES which filter the lymph of wastes and toxins, causing triggers of immune responses when the toxin load is overwhelming.

Lymphatic vessels pass filtered lymph to lymphatic ducts from where it enters the blood circulation through certain veins. The returning fluid may be described as BLOOD PLASMA which has completed its cycle or journey which is to take nutrients to the cells, remove their wastes and toxins for removal by the lymph nodes in the lymphatic system, thereby supporting fluid balance, living process, immune function and, if we like, homeostasis.

Lymph Nodes

They are among our STOP OVERS in the exploration of LYMPHOMA or cancer of the lymphatic system. There are about 500 to 800 lymph nodes in the body of an average person. They are in the head and neck, behind the ear, in front of the ear, arms, armpits (40-49 nodes), above the elbow joints, chest , abdomen, groin , behind the knee . Where are they not present in the masterpiece construction of the human body, each group servicing a specific area of the body?

The lymph nodes often mentioned in lymphoma are those in the neck , armpits and groin. As a child, I often had swellings in the groin which the Yorubas call PETELE(m:m:m). It often came with bad, open infections in the lower limbs, was painful and caused restricted mobility, but was easily resolved with warm or hot water presses. Those in the armpits cause women some extra worry because the armpit is connected to a breast and terminal breast cancers sometimes present large lymph node swelling there.

In the neck, the swellings were surgically defused through extraction by crude surgeons of the 1960s and perhaps 1970s as well. They did not realise they were thus removing road blocks against poison overload. Many doctors believe a cancer in this region, known as non Hodgkin’s LYMPHOMA, is a death sentence. However, herbal medicines sometimes prove them wrong. TINA ADUGBE can bear testimony of the case of an Editor who survived it. A director-general in Lagos State who later became provost at the College of Education at Ijanikin fared well on Amazon A-F until the medication became scarce. It was a proprietary blend targeted at bacteria and fungi while AMAZON A-V went straight for viruses. On his hospital clinic days, the doctors wondered if a mistake was made about his diagnosis. Sadly, he passed after the resurgence, shortly after a pilgrimage. Mrs. Folake Sanusi and I reminisced recently about the younger brother of one of her close friends, a woman from the Southeast of Nigeria who is a teacher in Lagos. The young man was dying in Enugu from chemotherapy and other pharmaceutical drugs when her sister contacted Mrs. Sanusi. Amazon A-F, guakatonga and Bell’s supreme immune booster were among the several herbal recipes sent to him. He came alive, filled with energy enough to continue his treatment in Lagos. His problem was that he had no money. His half siblings sister, a conventional medical consultant in England, was picking his hospital bills while his father was taking care of his wife and four children. His sister in Lagos could do only very little. His doctor sister insisted on chemotherapy. She and I spoke on the telephone. She agreed the herbs could help him from the descriptions of the chemistry of their actions. Nevertheless, she insisted on chemotherapy, if she would continue to fund his protocols. He obliged her. He died…

Lymphoma Types, Presentations

A hallmark of lymphoma is that LYMPHOCYTES, a group of soldiers in the immune system, become uncontrollably cancerous.

LYMPHOCYTES are found in different parts of the body, including the lymphatic vessels, blood stream, lymph nodes, adenoids, tonsils and spleen, for example. We may speak of two types of lymphoma… HODGKINS LYMPHOMA and NON-HODGKINS LYMPHOMA. Both may affect LYMPHOCYTES and lymphoid immobile lymph tissues such as lymph nodes, tonsils, adenoids and spleen. Non Hodgkin’s is differentiated in terms of the systemic manner by which it spreads.

Some of the presentations of both include swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, fever, itching, weight loss, coughing and chest pain, loss of appetite, abdominal swelling and pain, shortness of breath, inexplicable weight loss. However, not all swellings of lymphoid tissue are due to lymphoma. Other causes may be irritation, infection, inflammation and immune response. My generation of children whose swollen lymph nodes were invaded by “crude” surgeons using unsterilized knives may have survived infections and death largely because the swellings were not lymphoma, that is not cancerous and the tormented tissues were deadened with hot spices.

Lymphoma in Nigeria

According to the GLOBAL BURDEN OF DISEASES, a comprehensive research effort which examines 459 health outcomes and their risk factors, 5,194 cases of non Hodgkin’s LYMPHOMA hit Nigeria in 2022. The rate could have been higher but for under reporting of cases. This was about 4.1 percent of all cancer cases which numbered 127,763. The others were breast cancer 32,278 cases; prostate cancer 18,019 cases. Children are more susceptible, especially to burkitt lymphoma, which affects B lymphocyte cells and grow rapidly. The symptom may include swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, abdominal pain, swelling, fatigue and fever, among others. Survival rate is poor, largely because of inaccessibility to medical care and treatment abandonment which, in Kano for example, a study said could be as high as 85 percent. In respect of Non Hodgkin’s LYMPHOMA(NHL), survival rate may be as high as 11 years, according to another study. Even then, disease groups within this ambit exhibit different time lines.

Herbal Remedies

The starting point is to remember that LYMPHOMA is a cancer and to treat it as such. In such a matter, I always remember DR MAX GERSON who taught us that tumours such as uterine fibroids and cancers develop when the cells lose potassium and are infiltrated by sodium. This alters their existence from oxidative (oxygen dependent) life to fermentative (non oxygen dependent) metabolism. Out of touch with the body’s signalling systems, tumours and cancers defy control and grow rapidly. They poison surrounding cells and incite them into a possible death-causing rebellion. Thus, Dr. Gerson suggested massive dietary infusion of potassium into the body through the consumption of fruit and vegetables juices which are potassium rich. He came by this idea when he used them, on the advice of a medical lay person, to cure his terrible migraines which knocked him out of work for about two weeks in one month. He later prescribed them to cure some cases of cancer and other debilitating diseases. (Please check his work online under Dr. Max Gerson or the Gerson Institute).

Dr. Gerson also advocated organic coffee enemas. The coffee must be organic, please. It detoxifies the liver and the colon. A liver and colon may breed toxins which consume metabolites such as potassium which the body recalls from the cells to neutralise ACIDOSIS in the bloodstream. Acidosis causes de-oxygenation, a cause of cancer, and irritation, a cause of INFLAMMATION, which is present in cancers.

Dr. Gerson also improved the nutrition of his patients to neutralise free radicals with anti oxidants and to boost immune function.

Modern herbal medicine therapies against cancer have built on foundations provided by physicians before and after Dr. Gerson. Thus, today, it is possible to speak about a SEVEN-STEP THERAPY. These are 1) detoxification 2) oxygenation 3)anti-oxidation 4) immunity boosting 5) energy boosting 6) anti- inflammation and 7) nutrition and healing.

Certain herbs are specific for each of these therapies. I have mentioned Dr. Gerson’s ORGANIC COFFEE ENEMAS. The entire body requires DETOXIFICATION. Milk thistle is a super protector of the liver against toxins. Jerusalem artichoke, too is good. So are common club moss, dandelion root, cleavers, bitter cola and bitter leaf among several others. Carqueja clears out this organ. On the Nigerian market today, there are many proprietary medicines for DETOXIFICATION. Among them are EDIMAS DIFFENS, a 12 herb warehouse which kills bacteria, viruses, fungi etc always found in cancer tissues. There are also, several colon cleansers .

As for oxygenation, I doubt if we still have OXYGEN TABLETS on the market. The HYPERBARIC OXYGEN CHAMBER may be trickling in. Green plants, in liquid, tablet or powder forms, provide OXYGEN molecules through their CHLOROPHYLL, as does a chlorophyll powder supplement itself.

There are many antioxidants on the market, some of them specific in action, others multilateral. CoQ10 provides energy to cancer cells to not grow but to have the strength to commit suicide (apoptosis) by activating their P.53 gene, as Dr. Karl Folkers did in a landmark Finnish experiment which resolved about 30 hopeless terminal breast cancers. Vitamin C at about 6000mg daily in divided doses is an antioxidant which boosts production of white blood corpuscles.

In the days of the SUPREME IMMUNE BOOSTER, it was a first choice supplement for this purpose. Upcoming now is REGENERATING DRINK, designed to activate STEM CELL production. These cells replace damaged, aging, dying or dead cells . It also combats inflammation.

Among my favourites in the nutrition category are ANTI AGING 247, which is contra indicated for persons below 30 years of age, and DAILY BUILD. They come with more than 50 nutrients which the body requires everyday to keep itself in top form.

Anti oxidants are everywhere in nature. The trouble is that many people are not aware of them. Banana peel for example is a richer source of potassium. Avocado pear is potassium dense. Unripe plantain are. Its peel, are similarly, potassium packed. Banana peel may be eaten raw with meals. Plantain peel may be cooked. ORANGE PEEL is a blood cleanser and anti microbial. STINGING NETTLE leaves and root are alterative, that is blood cleansing herbs. Burdock root, yellow dock are also worth trying. Sugar should be cut off or minimised as cancers feed and grow on it. The more alkaline the diet is the better are the chances of victory. Bitters help the liver and the kidneys. The Yorubas say OTA ENU NI ORE INU. Enemies of the mouth are friends of the organ. Any wonder my generation of children developed “dirty “ blood hemorrhoids and lymph node swellings and lymphoma. We ate too much sugar and carbohydrates as many children still do today, with some coming down with leukemia very early. The message of LYMPHOMA DAY is: report any growth early to your doctor or healthcare provider.