Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Margaret Lost It To Acne: Thank God
We called her Maggie, She lived with her parents in our neighbourhood, just a stone-throw away from my house. She is a beau and brain. That is a rare combination in the academia. In one fell swoop, acne wiped off her academic confidence and radiance.

I mind my own business, but not when Maggie's mom, entered the counselling room of the church where I headed the counselling department. As soon as she recognised me from the door as her good neighbour, she ran to embrace me. That close contact revealed her rapidly beating heart-beats. I wasn't a beautician but I can read and discern the tell-tale sign of stress-induced mounds on her puffy face.

This made me only to hold her closely to me the more, with a re-assuringly warm embrace. With dertermination in my heart to puncture this ballon of sadness on her visage, I shot at her just before she took the seat that I offered her: "Wisdom is the pin and erazer that can deflate
and blot out evry balloon of sadness and scars on your face"!

She stood rigid with awe and asked me saying, "Has she told you?" It was my turn to woder, So, I asked her; "Who? What?". She replied: "My daughter, Maggie; about the Acne problem". Yes, I had hit the nail on the head. But No, I haven't seen or talked to Maggie in a month, and not about any acne.

Maggie was a second year student in the University, very brilliant in her class. Gradually, acne distraction crawled in, and so came with it, a contagious inflamation deeply infecting and affecting her academics and self-esteem. Following on the heels of this is the social and academic plunge for a once brilliant and beautiful scholar of budding repute in the university.

By the time Maggie's mom came to me, the acne crisis has eaten deeply into the matrimony, her home was already tearing apart, as her husband could not cope with the academic plunge of his daughter, and she also was helpless to salvage Maggie from the ravaging acne on her visage. Worst still, she too has started to spot acne spots all over her own face, by reason of worry.

I hope to share with you as a form of lessons and wisdom tips, how we successfully combated acne to a humiliating defeat, in Maggie and her mom's life, in my next two posts. It took four to eight months with immediate, noticeable and visible effects from the 3rd week.