MY TRAGIC STORY Catherine Muthoni Murungi (Nonnie) I WAS AMPUTATED ON 13TH OF FEB, 2013 AND THATS WHEN MY PAIN DECREASED My names are Catherine Muthoni Murungi (Nonnie) and I am 26 years old. I was born and brought up in Komarock estate and I have an older sister. My father died in 1989 in a road accident when I was just 2 years old. My mother took good care of me and my sister and educated us but unfortunately she died when I was doing my K.C.S.E exam in 2005 and by then my sister had just started university school at Daystar University. We were then forced to relocate to Meru at my grandmother’s place and rent out the house. That was 6 years ago. I managed to get a job at Kenyatta University at the student annex at their M-pesa shop until the tragic day. Three weeks after I started working there I took a matatu to Roysambu at 10.00 pm after work, I alighted at the main stage and took a boda boda to take me to Kasarani where I stayed with a friend. Minutes after boarding the motorcycle we were badly hit by a vehicle overtaking another near Naivas supermarket but it did not slow down or stop. The driver of our bodaboda died on the spot and I watched him painfully die while I was fighting to get up so that I could at least lie on the side of the road because we were thrown in the middle of the road and oncoming vehicles were almost running over us. The Naivas and KCB night guards came to my help and dragged me off the road and after putting me down they robbed me off my belongings and left me there helpless and fighting for my life. I was in and out of consciousness and so they thought I was also dead. They left us there on the rain after placing my jacket over my face. My right leg had been severely sheared up and so I was loosing a lot of blood. I stayed there drifting in and out of consciousness upto around 3.30 am, when a good Samaritan noticed me. I felt someone shaking me furiously and I heard him tell the other that I was not dead. I struggled to open my eyes praying to God to spare my life as I have a son who depended on me. They asked me for my family’s telephone numbers and I gave them. Twenty minutes later my friend and his friend arrived and he just didn’t know what to do. He put me in the taxi he had come with and they took me to Kiambu Hospital. We arrived there at around 4.30 am and the nurses who were on call there didn’t clean my wounds up before dressing it and by then it was thrice its normal size, with multiple fractures, they later took me to the wards at exactly 6.00am on 31st March 2012. I was still loosing a lot of blood and the bandages they had put on my leg were already leaking a lot of blood on the sheet but they didn’t do anything about it and so far I had got no medication or treatment and so I felt so weak. When the doctors did their round they told me that I had to be amputated and so I signed the necessary documents. Seeing how fast everything was happening I advised my friend to call my aunt (My Mum’s sister) who works at Chogoria Hospital as a nurse to try and help me out. she was very shocked and told my friend to try every means possible to get me to Chogoria hospital as soon as possible. My friend called her mum and explained the situation and they were managed to save me and so they called a taxi and put a mattress on it at the back where they laid me. They were to take me to the main bus stage (tea room) where I was to use the same mattress in a matatu lay on three seats and be transported to Chogoria. On seeing the pain I was in the taxi driver agreed to take me to Chogoria Hospital and told my friend that they would pay him later slowly by slowly. The three hour journey was so painful and I passed out so many times. On reaching the hospital I found my aunt waiting for me and I was put on the waiting stretcher and taken for an emergency surgery to clean my leg up. Didn’t know where I was after that until days later but I couldn’t sit up. Surgery after surgery they tried to fix my leg with metal plates, external fixators, screws and metal pins for months. I lost a lot of weight and my blood pressure went up due to pain. I was admitted on the 1st of April 2013and was discharged in End September to at least go home with an external fixator to try and stabilize me. By then I had had 15 surgeries including a skin graft. At home, at my aunts place in Kieganguru I started feeling much better and I added at least little weight. I was to be taken back in December but days before returning date I woke up with very much pain in my leg and so my aunt and uncle rushed me to Chogoria Hospital again. I was diagnosed with chronic bone infection and I started the treatment immediately. A month after that, the surgeon told me that my leg was not responding well with treatment and they needed to do amputation. My aunt talked to a surgeon who had also operated on me and he connected us with Italian Orthopaedic surgeons who usually come to Kenya twice a year. My bill by then was 769,000.00 including the surgeries and treatment. My aunt signed for me the bill so that we could be released to go to Narumoro where the Italian specialists were. They saw my X-ray and gave me two options. 1: to either put another external fixator which they said chances of it helping was 1% or 2: Amputation I was in so much pain because of the movements as I was bedridden for so many months and the journey to Narumoro was so painful for me to be moved inside the car and getting out and the bad road too. That’s when I decided to get amputed and so they took me to Nyeri, Mathari hospital on 6th Feb, 2013. I was amputated on 13th of Feb, 2013 and thats when my pain decreased. I stayed there for a few more days and I was taken to theatre again so as to clean my wound which was at my thigh where they had removed skin to graft on the lower part of my leg where the big wound Was. My bill was 25000 Kshs at Mathari hospital but my aunt struggled with family and friends helping us and paid it. The Italians transported me from Nyeri to Narumoru where I stayed at their children’s home for 43 days each day charging me Kshs. 500, a total of 21,500 Kshs. My aunt is still struggling to clear the bill that was left at Chogoria Hospital and after I came home I was scheduled for another surgery still at Chogoria hospital for removal of pins situated at my knee joint to allow flexibility of the knee so as to be fitted with a prosthetic leg at Kikuyu hospital where am required to go with 100,000 Kshs. to purchase the artificial leg. I have been in so much pain within such a short period of time and I don’t know what to do but to wait for well wishers to help me raise the amount. The second surgery and hospitalization cost us 38,000 but still my knee won’t move. I attend physiotherapy now thrice a week each session paying 250 kshs. to try and mobilize my joint. Family and friends have been very supportive, financially and emotionally and I thank God for them but the load is till so heavy. I now use crutches to move about from place to place waiting for that artificial leg that will make my life better. At the moment I am still at my aunts’ place at Kieganguru, Meru because I have nowhere else to go and she has been so good to me spiritually, emotionally and financially. I appeal to you friends to help me on this journey, I am almost finishing but I cannot do it on my own. God gives and takes away and I know he has a good plan for me and each one of us. What God Can do no man can do and I believe there is a reason for everything.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 22:09:30 +0000
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