Were it not for two contacts I had with renown surgeon and newspaper columnist Yusuf K. Dawood, most likely you wouldn't be reading this column today. He is one who inspired and challenged me to write it.

My first contact with him was through his first book: "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" published in 1985. My classmate Kenneth Ochieng, whose brother was a medical doctor, came with the book and gave me to read it over the weekend when as students we never wanted any textbook near us. I liked the book. It was a collection of the "Surgeon's Diary" column that had by then been published in the newspaper. At the time, the column was only six years old having began in 1980. The book got me addicted to the column to the last Sunday the surgeon penned it 27 years after I read the first one.

But it was in the year 2000 when I really got hooked to the "Surgeon's Diary" column. My editor assigned me to write about - to quote his words -"this doctor who has invaded our territory and doing very well."