“I was set out to be a car mechanic. It was the hand of fate (or divine providence) that changed that course. I am now a human mechanic, a surgeon.”
This is what an elated Dr Stanley Aruyaru tweeted last month on his rapid rise from a hopeless student in Meru to a surgeon. The Fellow American College of Surgeons’ newest member opens up on the long road to becoming a doctor:
“I was born late into the year. It was on the second day of the second last month. This means I am still receiving birthday gifts.
I consider myself a late bloomer because I started school at the age of nine, after an epidemic of livestock disease decimated the herd of goats entrusted under my care.
I was nonchalant in primary school. Nothing out of the ordinary; the usual struggles of village life for an average family.
My performance in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam of 1998 at Lailuba Primary made me a village celebrity after scoring 501 out of 700 marks, a record that would stand for 18 years.
‘Do not deny us our first ever doctor’, a teacher told my dad when he went to collect the letter.
Sadly, dad could not pay high school fees and so he opted to take me to the village polytechnic, where I was to train as a mechanic. But my teachers had other ideas. They stopped me from joining the polytechnic.
A harambee was held and I reported to St Cyprian High School in the middle of the first term. The first year was a needed calm before the financial storm that would characterise the remainder of my secondary education.
But two decades later, this village boy has turned into a different mechanic who deals with blood instead of oil, bones instead of metals and flesh in the place of aluminium. The kind of mechanic who fixes the engine whilst it’s still running. The human mechanic.
I am a surgeon. A man who rose from the windswept village of Lailuba against all odds and gained global recognition as a Fellow at the American College of Surgeons.
I do not share this to elicit empathy and pity on myself. I hope it will attract admiration and pride for my villagers who saw a promising ember and worked tooth and nail to ensure it was not extinguished.
Being a surgeon is a singular chance that utilises not only my doctor’s expertise to diagnose and treat, but also the dexterity of my hands to fix what is broken in a patient. I cherish every moment of this profession.
The journey to becoming a surgeon began after high school. After scoring a clean A and gaining admission to Moi University, I spent six transformative years before graduating with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) degree.
I was fortunate during this period to gain a merit travel scholarship to Sweden (Linköping University) where I was exposed to modern medicine.
This experience had such an impact on my impressionable young mind that I would yearn for a modern well-stocked and staffed institution for my post-graduate training, where financial challenges would not predominantly limit my learning resources.
I thereafter landed myself at Aga Khan University, East African Medical College, Nairobi, for my specialised training and graduated as a general surgeon in 2017.
That same year I sat the College of Surgeons of East Central and Southern Africa (COSECSA) exams in Mozambique to be admitted as a fellow, FCS (ECSA), in general surgery.
Since graduating as a surgeon, I have worked in Nyeri and Meru. I have been challenging myself to bring the ‘finest care in the furthest corner’. Could I offer level VI care to the rural folks? That is how I started using and identifying with the tagline ‘village surgeon’.
I think this tagline has finally served its full purpose, having claimed the title of my first book, The Chronicles of a Village Surgeon.
What is surgery like, on a day to day?
“Almost every acquaintance asks this. Being a surgeon is high octane drama. It is an adrenaline packed endeavour. Sometimes we heal, other times we fail. By the tip of the scalpel.
Patients come to us in droves. Some on the verge of precipice, others just seeking advice. Some we vacate, others we invade. By the tip of the scalpel.
There are often many reasons to complain about the practice, but there are more reasons to be happy, hopeful and grateful. The ebb and flow of surgery takes you to the extremes of experience; sometimes you lose patients, other times you revive near write-offs. It is like boxing; every champion has suffered the sucker punch and the red eye.
Although the surgeon remains the key cog in the wheel, surgery is a team sport in all its aspects.
This is why I feel so passionate about any opportunity to galvanise the other cadres of staff that form the surgical team.
