Book Review: Dying Many Times

This is the first time I have read Ghanaian non-fiction, closed the last page and found myself truly at a loss for words, getting angry with the writer for taking me through a tortuous tour of pain in his life, guiding me around the bloody deep cuts our health system inflicted on his love with whom he started life’s journey on a note of hope and faith but ended in a tragedy at Korlebu Hospital on Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 11.06 am.

I have never come out of a book where I felt the personal agony of the writer tag the sleeves of my heart, numbing me as I turned page after page, leaving me extremely infuriated with the system and heartbroken over and over again about the helplessness of the pain playing out before my eyes; and yet denying me the luxury to take consolation in the book being fiction.

Maybe that’s why it hurts – the fact that everything I read is real accompanied by images that communicate the picturesque devastating effect of cancer not only on the patient, Patience Akyena Brantuo, but her immediate family too.

Dying Many Times, the Struggle of a Cancer Patient is a book written by someone, once a firebrand student leader who at one time was Aide to the Chief of Staff, Office of the President and at another time Aide to the Minister of Information but by some extreme acrobatics of fate finds himself at rock bottom having to beg for all kinds of support to keep the love of his life alive while caring for a young child without assistance.

For those of us who heard the legend of the writer, Benjamin Akyena Brantuo as a student leader of the great Commonwealth Hall, it is not surprising how his book communicates detailed pain with literary finesse and grammatic simplicity.

In the west, some families who lose a member to cancer donate the bodies to enhance cancer research, in which case I believe the frank details of Akyena Brantuo’s account and the graphic presentation convincingly suffices as Mr. and late Mrs Akyena Brantuo’s contribution to the understanding of cancer in our part of the world.

Whereas I set out to write just two-sentence praise for the book, see how far I have come?

Now, despite provocative scenarios during his wife’s emergency treatment that show our hospital system is messed up to a point where prayer is the only hope, I considered it profound that the writer kept his faith in his country, extolling Ghanaian patriotism where I would have been lost to Canada.

Overall, the book is an honest, open, compelling, emotional chronicle of a love affair that blossomed into a battle against cancer, a battle the writer believed was a sign through which God would have “proven” Himself to the family for them to live happily ever after. But alas.

Benjamin Akyena Brantuo offers a unique perspective about life, death family, prayer, our health care system and…look, let me end it here. Call 0244825187 for your own personal copy.