My wife’s faith. Her fervent prayers. Her doggedness. They were my leaning blocks. I watched her age a lot during this period. Her constant fasting almost made her lose as much weight as I had lost. I felt such pure love radiating from her. The feel of her love towards me was one of the things that kept me going during this period.
One night, at around 11:55pm, that familiar uncomfortable feeling started again. You would think how familiar I had become with it, I would know how to deal with it without panicking. But as my chest tightened, the panic began. I grappled with my oxygen mask and nebulizer that were placed beside my bed. My hands slipped and pushed the holder away.
Panic gripped harder. My wife noticed immediately and, in a flash, she was by my side, trying to fit the oxygen mask over my face. This time though, something was different. Even though I was greedily sucking the oxygen off the mask, it felt like nothing was hitting my lungs. My airways still felt blocked.
Wordlessly, I tried to explain to my wife that it wasn’t working. She understood and immediately bounded out of the room to go and call my driver. It seemed like we would be taking another trip to the hospital.
Everything that happened after that was a blur. All I knew was that I spent the next five days in the hospital, going in and out of consciousness.
The night I was rushed to the hospital on emergency, my doctor declared I needed an emergency dialysis. But it was not my usual day for dialysis. I wasn’t booked for the day, but since it was an emergency, we expected to get some preference from the dialysis centre.
That was not to be so. The staff at the centre refused to attend to us since I wasn’t booked for the day. The refusal of the health workers that day almost cost me my life.
During the period I was held up at the dialysis centre, my breathlessness grew worse. I couldn’t focus on anything. The oxygen that was being supplied to my lungs through the cylinder didn’t seem to be enough. Two large cylinders of oxygen were interchanged that morning to provide the much-needed oxygen for me. But they seemed to be dispensing into thin air. Several frantic efforts to release oxygen into my lungs were futile. I began to gasp for breath. Life began to ebb from me. It was as if my soul was departing from me to a faraway place. My hands began to grow weak and cold. The medical doctor and the nurses around me looked as if they were a hundred metres away. I was beginning to see everything faintly. My mouth began to dry up. I became agitated as it became obvious that I was transiting to heaven. I knew I needed divine intervention.
“Call my wife! Call my wife!” I struggled to allow the words to escape through my lips.
“MJ, please pray. I don’t want to die,” I spoke in desperation.
My wife began to pray fervently. I heard her, through the speaker, speaking in tongues. Gradually I became relieved. Within minutes, the oxygen began to work. Moments later, it was my turn to use the next available dialysis machine. My life was saved again. Hope was restored.
A few days later, I heard of a man who died within eight hours after he became breathless. He had been rushed to the hospital in the same condition I battled with, day and night, for six weeks.
I remained resolute in my belief in God’s promise of sustenance. I held on to that faith that He could not sustain me if I died. He wouldn’t leave me to die. I was now deeply entrenched in the dying field, yet God’s promise to sustain me remained my anchor. I believed that he would sustain me.
As part of a way of understanding the regular bouts of breathlessness, Dr. Ogo Egbuna of Kidney Solutions prescribed “stress test” for me during one of our nightly anxious moments. He said I needed the test to check the condition of my heart. He was stumped for what else could be wrong with me.
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