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Nairaland Forum / Entertainment / Celebrities / Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer (1861 Views)
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Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by spora1: 7:14pm On Apr 16, 2008 |
Veteran broadcaster and the brain behind NTA AM Express, Uncle Yinka Craig is said to be down with Cancer. Please send hum a get well wish here. Uncle, we love you. You are a model to many of us. We wish you soonest recovery, sir. Get well soon. |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by GUNNER(f): 7:25pm On Apr 16, 2008 |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by Raymond88(m): 8:00pm On Apr 16, 2008 |
Oh no! i really hope he wins this battle. . . |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by almondjoy(f): 9:23am On Apr 17, 2008 |
Oh dear! I wish him all the best! |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by clemcykul(f): 10:56am On Apr 17, 2008 |
aww poor dude may God heal him |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by showbobo(m): 12:28pm On Apr 17, 2008 |
Get Well Soon Dear.We Love You |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by AINEE(m): 9:18am On Apr 18, 2008 |
With God nothing is impossible i pray he see him through |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by mafolayomi(f): 11:45am On Apr 18, 2008 |
yes, he will surely win the battle by God's grace. it is well with you sir |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by UNLEASHED(m): 1:32am On Apr 19, 2008 |
May God heal him from his illness. . . .Amen! |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by steaming(f): 3:11pm On Apr 21, 2008 |
Divine healing, Uncle. |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by bigfather(m): 3:47pm On Apr 21, 2008 |
Wow !!! Am shocked and moved to tears I pray he wins the battle . Amen. |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by Akwok: 12:08pm On Apr 23, 2008 |
God is your healer, Uncle Craig. |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by anusule(m): 2:54pm On Apr 23, 2008 |
be healed. |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by carmelily: 4:05pm On Apr 23, 2008 |
God bless, Yinka craig |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by GUNNER(f): 5:26pm On Apr 23, 2008 |
Tunde Fagbenle wrote in SUNDAY TRIBUNE, 20th April, 2008 Yinka Craig: Hope for a friend This, for me, is not an easy column to write and one I have struggled to keep myself from writing for about a year now. Yes, a whole year, even longer, is how long my friend, that Nigerian ace broadcaster and personable humorist, Yinka Craig, has been battling to stay alive – fighting not to give the dreaded C the last laugh over his self. I’ve kept off writing about Yinka’s affliction and his struggle partly because he may frown at making public his private fight, and partly because I kept hoping that the frustrating on-and-off manner of the illness would have been overcome for good by now. It has not been so and Yinka’s need for help appears even more desperate now than ever! Yinka Craig has spent the better part of his 60 years of life in radio and television broadcasting, running oft-innovative programmes – from sports to weekend newsline, to morning magazine programmes – and warming our hearts with his inimitable style of presentation, genteel humour and a characteristic toothy smile. His 40 years in broadcasting, from the days of the old WNBS, is almost as old as the history of broadcasting in independent Nigeria, and certainly synonymous with it. I am not familiar with the equivalent of Yinka Craig in American television, but in England you would be thinking of a cross between that grand old embodiment of British humour and conviviality, Bruce Forsythe, and Michael Parkinson! They don’t make them like these any more. Respected and invited by leaders of government, industry, monarchs, and topmost foreign diplomats to their private and official functions, many simply proud to flaunt their association with him. Not for nothing. Yinka is a man of many parts, multi-talented, quick-witted, and incredibly knowledgeable about most things, from astronomy and space-technology to computer science, from sports to politics, from entertainment to oil exploration! A master of rib-cracking anecdotes, Yinka Craig is an entertainer extraordinaire and instrumentalist, at ease playing the guitar as he is on the piano or the sax. He is also an addict of the game of intellect; he could spend all day behind his desk navigating the seas or the sky on his high-tech simulation toy, or routinely demolishing books and books of hard cryptic crossword or logic-challenging sudoku! It was one morning, some 18 or so months ago, when I got a call from Kenny (Yinka’s wife, Dr. Kehinde Craig) informing me that Yinka was in an hospital bed, a top private hospital on Victoria Island, Lagos. He had been there for almost a month, but I was not in the country and my calls to him had eerily not been answered or returned. I rushed to the clinic and found my friend, hitherto of irrepressible enthusiasm and cheer, in a limp and emaciated form. He struggled to put up a smile for me, a smile of “see what I’m reduced to”. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What ails you, Yinka? My mind raced through all sorts of possibilities and I kept shooting them at him and his wife. Nope, nope, nope, came the answer to my impatient flurry of questions. Cancer! Lymphoma!! Late diagnosed, as the doctors and everyone had been testing for everything I’d touched upon, leaving the real thing. I was shown digital pictures of the various stages the damn thing had manifested itself on Yinka over the many weeks he’d been unwell. Terrible pictures, of paleness and disfigurement. So, actually, what I was seeing was a back-to-life Yinka, I was told. Lymphoma? What’s that? I quickly went on the Internet to find out more about it. What I read, mostly from “lymphoma-net. org” website, gave me some hope as I discovered that there is a good chance of survival for many years, if treated promptly and adequately. It describes lymphoma as “cancers of the lymphatic system” and the lymphatic system as a network of tubes, glands and organs that is part of the body's defense against infection – the immune system. There are different types of lymphoma. Some lymphomas are called Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), formerly known as “Hodgkin’s disease”, while others are Non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL). Non-Hodgkin lymphomas are more problematic and that’s what Yinka is diagnosed as having. It is more common in those aged over 60, although it can occur at any age. It affects slightly more men than women. “As in many cancers, lymphoma is most likely to be cured if it is diagnosed early and treated promptly.” That, precisely, is the trouble. Yinka’s lymphoma was diagnosed late, no thanks to the poor state of our medical facilities that meant the specimen for everything being tested for had to be flown outside Nigeria, this time to South Africa! What a shame. Cut a long story short, Yinka had to be flown out to the UK a few days after I saw him. And that is the beginning of the story. Millions of naira has gone down to give him some of the best treatment possible in the UK. Yinka has been back twice to Nigeria, each time as it appears the demon had been wrested, or resources had run out, or both, only for the damn thing to rear its ugly head again! It’s called “remission” and “recurrence”, a syndrome apparently of common occurrence in Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Four days ago, the day after I arrived Nigeria again this time, Kenny called intimating me of developments. An aggressive relapse had occurred and Yinka had been back to the private hospital in Victoria Island (V.I) where he started a year and a half ago. That was two weeks ago. “We have to leave for Abuja now,” Kenny said in a low, sad, tone. “The doctors here believe he needs to be taken to a hospital with an Intensive Care unit. So we’re going to try the National Hospital, Abuja. If you have to see him before we leave then you’d better come now.” I hurried down to V.I where I found my friend looking awful. He couldn’t even manage that self-deprecating smile anymore. I think he was getting tired and pissed off with the whole thing. The battle is getting too long drawn and the fighter is weary. He rolled over on one side, to look into my eyes. I tried to avoid his weak eyes and gave him our traditional call, “baba mi.” I heard him mutter the response, “we(y) ti mo baba re,” and rolled back away. The rest of it he left unsaid, “o to goloto goloto bi ye e, we(y) mo baba re!” Well, it’s good enough he responded at all anyway. I’m now told Yinka urgently needs to go back abroad, this time preferably to the States where he would have to undergo a transplant treatment. The process may take up to two months hospitalization and the overall cost would come to about $300,000 (US dollars). I did a quick calculation, that’s about N38 million. Not bad, I thought, then I remembered the kind of country we live in and held back my optimism. The Craigs have expended virtually all their resources on the illness so far. Yinka’s pride wouldn’t let him make his situation public. He knows all the big men in the country, and I mean that literally, and most of them on first name basis and with their private numbers. And they all know him. Very few have come to his aid so far. The real big ones for whom this sort of money he’s looking for means nothing have been all promises and promises. And Yinka would not call them again. I understand. It’s not ego, but decency. Why would he have to go begging and crawling to people who would before not have a party without including him on their guest list, now need for him to demean himself before they would keep their promise to help? What’s even a million dollars to save a man like Yinka Craig, a national asset if there was one, and daily we hear of billions of naira, nay, dollars, being cornered here, there, and everywhere? It’s a national call, Nigeria must not let Yinka die without giving him the best chance to survive. While at it, I must mention one particular giver who surprised us all at the very first time Yinka had to go abroad. The surprise was that this was someone who did not count amongst Yinka’s personal friends but merely know him from the distance just as most Nigerians do. Somehow it got to his ears that Yinka needed to go abroad for treatment and he called him and asked for him to send someone down in the morning. Yinka did and was N5 million up. To be honest, we were expecting no more than N500,000. Thanks, Dr. Erastus Akingbola, CEO of Intercontinental Bank Plc. Of course, there have been a few others chipping in little sums here and there that helped to get him so far. A little on the transplant treatment, again, I went on the Internet to find out: “Transplantation may be used in patients whose non-Hodgkin' s lymphoma has relapsed as an aggressive form of the disease or in patients with aggressive non-Hodgkin' s lymphoma that does not respond to ordinary chemotherapy. The transplant can be from another person or, more often, from the patient themselves, with the cells needed for the transplant collected before the high-dose chemotherapy.” The irrepressible TV presenter and producer in Yinka is undaunted by it all. He tells me he will survive this, no matter what. Indeed, his mind is already working on another baby, a new TV program that he says will break the box. This poor turn of his health is a mere “irritant” that will go away, he says. He can’t wait to get started again. Yinka needs to go for the transplant in the States immediately. Those with a large heart may call Yinka’s wife, Dr. Kehinde Craig on 08030780129 or 08058466857. You may also email: yinkacraig@gmail. com. Yinka may not be President Yar’Adua who can be flown to Germany for regular medical attention, but he has lived his life bringing us exciting television programmes and giving us all hearty laugh. Some silly lymphoma is threatening to rid us of that laugh. Nigeria and Nigerians must deny it that pleasure. How very sad and touching, indeed these are trying times for the entire Craig family I pray that the Almighty God grant him the strength to fight and overcome this deadly disease |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by lanreflo(m): 10:14pm On Apr 23, 2008 |
The family released a statement and also launched a blog to receive comments. check out, www.yinkacraig.org |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by tjadeba(m): 9:17am On Apr 24, 2008 |
My dear Uncle Yinka, place your hope in God! He is your fortress , Hope you'll bloom again soon! Hope these flowers brighten your room and your heart! Get well soon! Sending a big bunch of bright wishes for you to feel better soon! Loving thoughts are tucked inside this bundle of flowers! Good health starts with a happy heart. Hope these flowers start the job! Sending you healing thoughts and a little sunshine to brighten your day. Sending you some get well cheer! To brighten your day! Warmest wishes for a speedy recovery! Hope you're back on your feet again soon! As you rest and heal, know that you are thought of warmly and wished a quick recovery. Get Well Soon Wishing You A Speedy Recovery Hope You're Feeling Better Soon We miss you! Come back soon! Here's a gift to give you a lift! Best wishes for a speedy recovery! That shade of green doesn't become you…feel better soon! Smiles are the best medicine. Here's a generous dose! Prescription to feel better? Take this gift and I'll call you in the morning. we shall rejoice with you and your family soon and very soon! (AMEN) |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by Xmas: 2:32pm On Apr 24, 2008 |
May the miracle working God heal you.May the stripes of His beloved son,Our Lord Jesus Christ bring you healing,May the Lord's mercy and favour shine on you now, on the sick bed and forever,Amen. |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by Nobody: 3:56pm On Apr 24, 2008 |
Yinka Craig You still have LIFE in YOU! Dont give up! |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by Dextiny(f): 12:28pm On Apr 25, 2008 |
Uncle Bros, Receive ur healing now in Jesus Name, Amen |
Re: Send Yinka Craig A Get Well Wish- As He Battles Cancer by inze(m): 5:28pm On Apr 25, 2008 |
Get well soon abeg, Baba God wey do am for me go do am for you too, Make una say Amen, |
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