Except a Miracle Happens … These People May Never Leave Igbobi Hospital – Part 1
On Christmas day, the National Orthopaedic Hospital (NOH), Igbobi, on Ikorodu Road was as quiet and deserted as a Northern village after a terror attack. Save for few security personnel at the entrance and a lone female security officer reading at the long hallway of the Women’s Ward on the last floor of Mobolaji House (Accidents Wards) building, everywhere was quiet.
The female ward had only four patients who could not leave since doctors and healthcare personnel strike started some eight weeks ago.
The G-ward which, in Igbobi parlance, is the home for abandoned patients, had about 15 men from late 20s upwards, all living with one medical riddle or another, or where there is a medical solution, they are crippled by financial incapacity.
A fellow at the basement of the block, who was on strike but came to ‘pick up’ something, told Daily Times that even if the Orthopaedic hospital was shut down permanently, those people would have nowhere to go … except a miracle happens.
The first of the patients Daily Times spoke with was 65- yearold Felicia Ugwuegbu, who was enjoying a late breakfast brought by her granddaughter this Christmas day.
A native of Umuehihie in Uzoagba local government area of Imo State, Felicia, a widow who was living at 25, Tapa Street, Orile-Iganmu, before a traditional wedding took her to a village where she had what she believes to be an esoteric encounter.
The story that ended at the Orthopaedic hospital, Igbobi, started after the death of her husband when her daughter was getting married, she narrated.
“After the ceremony, we were leaving, but I decided to just greet my late husband’s stepmother not far from there. When I was walking towards the house, I didn’t know someone had put something on the ground for me, and I stepped on it.
“Only three days after that, a sharp pain started in the middle of my right leg, and before evening, the area of the pain turned dark and formed a circle; by the next day, which was the fourth, a whitish round spot appeared in the middle.”
Thinking it was a puse, her son pricked open the whitish spot with a toothpick and a lot of colourless fluid flowed out.
“But the thing shot a sharp pain to my brain and I wasn’t myself.
When my son saw my situation, he took me to one pastor who looked at the leg and prayed.
After that, he said he had given the thing inside my leg one week to come out by force, and exactly one week after, that was what happened.
It was a Monday evening when this strange thing, like the kind of maggot you see inside palm tree, crawled out of my leg.”
Looking back many years after, the family was not sure anymore whether that miracle was a solution, or it simply aggravated her condition because, according to Felicia, the hole from which the creature crawled out began to expand, emitting fluid that defied every form of medication and over time, it became a big sore that teed off the battle for the recovery of her right leg. That was 30 years ago.
From traditional healers to orthodox doctors and back to traditional healers, including an Indian healer, she shuttled, but instead of healing, the sore only festered the more. According to her, the Indian healer, who used to come once a week to treat the leg, was not achieving the desired result.
So the story continued until one of her son’s friend counselled the family.
“My son, Emeka’s friend said this kind of thing happened to his mother and that it was treated at Igbobi; that if you see his mother now you will never believe she suffered this kind of attack. So my son Emeka arranged and brought me here.” Doctors at the hospital had responded by placing her on drips during their first month of admission.
“They used to work very well here at that time,” said Felicia.
“They put me on drips and gave me four pints of blood, and then they advised me to be drinking plenty of water every day.”
According to the patient, the doctors told her they would need to watch her condition for some time before they could decide which approach to take.
“The doctors then said we should pay N70,000 so that they would control the sore with one machine that would force out water from my leg because it was the water that made the medicines I had been using ineffective.”
Using the machine to force out the said fluids would cost N35,000 per week, so her son managed to raise the money and the treatment did show some promise.
“We were all happy and looking forward to the next stage, but then they said the operation would cost something like N450,000,” She threw up her hands in despair, “Where will a widow get that kind of money? My son Emeka is not rich. We were just looking at ourselves, not knowing what to do and begging God to help us, when doctors started their strike. “Even if they resume work again, from where will my people get N450,000 from?” Emeka has been running round, even seeking to borrow, but has not succeeded in raising all the money required for his mother’s operation.
According to Felicia, Emeka has paid about N200,000, but without the full payment the operation would not be performed.
Daily Times was still in the ward when Emeka came in to wish his mother a Merry Christmas. In a separate discussion, the young man in his 40s told Daily Times to disregard the entire story about poison and stepping on something on the ground. “The doctors have said my mother is afflicted with some cancer in her flesh, that is why the sore is not responding to treatment, but the surgery pending before doctors went on strike is not the problem, but the money involved.”
He lamented that he is only a petty businessman struggling to make a living. “My mother’s sickness has been a financial burden. If I don’t get help, I don’t know what is going to happen because the money required and other things are in the region of N450,000. I have emptied everything to pay some but I just can’t get any more money. Please help me appeal to our good people of Nigeria to help me out.” Frail Felicia was naked to her waist but for the surgical bandage wrapped around her neck, chest and below her breasts.
Suliat Azeez was only 36 years old when the hand of fate reached her at her 9, Eredua Street, Makoko residence on Lagos Mainland.
Like a script straight from Nollywood, her condition was crafted to look like a human error, but it went beyond that, she said.
Speaking in almost a whisper in Yoruba, Suliat told Daily Times she had boiled hot water herself and carried the pot on a plank shelf just over the table in the house. A few minutes later, she had returned to take out something from the same shelf but in the process, she upset the plank: the uncovered pot emptied its scalding content on her chest.
Suliatu struggled between slipping into unconsciousness and consciousness, but did manage to let out a short sharp scream before losing consciousness. She woke up hours later at a clinic where the doctor suggested that she be moved to the Orthopaedic hospital, Igbobi.
Some nine months later, Suliatu told Daily Times, she was being considered for skin graft surgery that will cost N270,000.
Her husband, Azeez, has not been able to raise any part of the money. The little deposit he borrowed all went to meeting the cost of her hospital bed, feeding and dressings and no other money has come before the strike began.
So what hope is there for Suliat?
“I do not know,” she told Daily Times amidst tears, “I don’t know where help will come from. I live in pain all the time; the drugs they give me to help relieve my pains finished before doctors stopped working more than two months ago. I live in pains in the day, I live in pains in the night; every day, I live in pains. I just don’t know what I am going to do.”
The third patient in the female ward is Yemisi (not her real name), a graduate of business administration from the Lagos State University. From her lively girlish voice, you wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong except that she was lying face down on her bed with a green bedsheet covering her from midriff down to her very toes.
The first of five children, Yemisi first wanted to know why Daily Times was conducting these interviews; unconvinced that she could attract help through the publication, she shrugged and decided to talk because she was in Christmas mood.
Now 39, but looking much younger, the slim black lady told Daily Times she was running a private salon before this mysterious thing spoilt things for her.
“I was having pain in my rib side so I went to a medical centre where I was given injection.
Three days after that injection, I couldn’t move my legs; I couldn’t even feel I had legs.
“I was taken back to the centre;
they could not even explain what they must have done wrong, but they suggested I do an x-ray, which I did. The result showed there was an infection in the spine, and they referred me to the Infectious Diseases Hospital, IDH, at Yaba.
“There, they conducted many tests, including my spittle and urine, and they said there was no trace of such, yet I still can’t move my legs.
‘‘Another mystery soon surfaced; the skin around her waist and part of both thighs started losing texture.
“I have been in this condition for a long time and now I am in Igbobi to do skin grafting. I have been on this bed for over a year.”
So, what was the stage of her treatment before the strike of last November?
“Ummn, I have been doing skin grafting, and you know that grafting is stage by stage; so far, I have done three stages. Why it is taking this long is that where the skin was taken to graft in another area, I have to wait for that place to heal properly before any other one can be attempted.” On her bills, she said people have been helping her, “But as you know, payment here is not easy at all, but God has been so faithful.”
Though sounding lively and confident, Yemisi said she had paid over N2 million since the treatment started. On the whole, she could not put a sum on what the bill would be at the end of it all, and she even added… “if there will be an end to this thing at all.”
You look cheerful yet you’re not sounding optimistic?
“I have to cheer myself up; it’s the least I could do to help myself. I should tell you I am on wheelchair all the time. If I’m not lying down like this, I have to be on wheelchair.
“Then unlike other cases here, no bill is given to me beforehand;
they prepare for each grafting when they judge it was time and give me the bill. So far, I have paid over N2 million for skin grafting.”
According to her, meeting the cost for her condition is a large collective effort.
“The payments are met by my aged parents, some friends and some NGOs. I had to close down my salon and ever since I have not been able to do anything. I just depend on my God.”
How long will the entire treatment take?
“I don’t know, I can’t really say; I have been here for so long, and now they are on strike.”
If there should be an intervention, by any miracle, how much would she ask for?
“l cannot dictate to a helper; I can’t even place a figure on it, but my hope one day is that I will leave here, no matter what happens, and when I do, I intend to stay on my own and find something to do, and not just staying at home on my wheelchair, because I can still run my business. There is nothing I cannot do, and with God, everything is possible; that’s my belief.” The oldest patient here is 82 years old Madam Rebecca Oladipupo who told Daily Times she was a woodworker, breaking and selling firewood back at Oshogbo before a freak accident occurred that has kept her in sitting condition 30 years on.
“I was breaking firewood in the bush when another wood fell on my leg,” she said in Yoruba. “Every traditional help I tried failed me, so, someone in Ishaga brought me to Igbobi and left me here.” On her arrival early last year, doctors told Rebecca she would need to pay N150,000 for three operations and she says she had no one in the world to help her.
*this was published in the Daily Times newspaper dated Monday, December 29, 2014
