Farewell to my Captain

A true story about the joys and challenges experienced by both guardian and patient on a terminal medical journey. A younger brother takes on the medical challenges of an older brother and together they fight a litany of his ailments including chronic kidney failure, hypertension, diabetes and coronary heart disease, among others. The medical challenges took the two brothers (Felix the patient and Vincent the guardian) from Malawi to South Africa, back to Malawi and India, where Felix finally succumbed. The story celebrates brotherly love in the context of life threatening illness that calls for tenacity, sacrifice, team work, personal reflections about life, and the impact of death on the individual, family and friends. It paints an emotional journey that absorbs everyone around the pair into their ordeals, hopes, setbacks and successes to the very bitter end. The reader is also drawn into personal ownership of this roller coaster journey and immersed into the very fabric of plot, characters and form. The factual events are explored in a manner that mimics fiction but retaining the authenticity of a true story. The story evokes a mix of emotions from the Diary of Anne Frank, Dickens's Oliver Twist and Chinua Achebe's Things fall apart. You will not stop reading once you start, until you finish the last page!