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MY 40 Days and 41 Nights in LUTH. I have shared this experience with everyone close to me, but I feel it would be ungrateful of me if I do not share this testimony with the whole World. In a year full of regrets, God came through for me and my family when we needed Him. A THREAD
I am cursed or blessed with never forgetting dates of events. The date was Sunday 8th of September 2019, my younger brother, the 4th of five sons who was serving his fatherland in @HQNigerianArmy secondary school Umunede,Delta state called my mum to say he was feeling a bit ill..
My mum is always sensitive to sickness, so she tells him to go to the general hospital in Agbor the next day which is a more urban place than where he was serving. He obeyed and went that Monday in the company of his friend, my mum spoke with the doctor who attended to him over..
The phone and assured him she was going to pay for all he needed from Lagos and that he should be accorded the best attention from them. The doctor ran some tests and diagnosed him with malaria and typhoid. He commenced treatment immediately for which my folks paid via transfers
He was subsequently admitted Cos his symptoms were getting worse and he seemed to be deteriorating. I didn’t even know he was sick till Wednesday when he called me and as I hailed him as usual, he answered so pale to my surprise...he then told me he was not feeling well at all..
And he’d been in hospital for three days now. I was so angry he hadn’t told me earlier, so I also insisted on speaking with the doctor just to find out exactly what was wrong with him. The doctor assured me he was responding to treatment and that he will be fine... by Thursday,
My mum was already saying I should come home and take her to Agbor so we can bring him to Lagos to better medical care Cos she couldn’t understand why malaria and typhoid wouldn’t respond to treatment after three days. By now, my brother was complaining of a terrible pain in his
Abdomen, which was causing him to vomit everything he tried to eat. So we called an uncle of mine who lives in Agbor to go to the hospital, assess his condition and let us know if we should move him to Lagos or not. The man did that on Friday and told us the doctors assured him
My brother was improving. I spoke with him over the phone and told him if he doesn’t feel better by the weekend, I will bring him to Lagos. Around 11pm that night, he called me and told me “CY if you don’t bring me to Lagos tomorrow, I don’t think I will survive this”....
I was shocked and asked why he was saying that..he said he just couldn’t understand the way he was feeling. So I told him not to worry and I booked a flight for him immediately from Asaba to Lagos for 3pm on Saturday the 14th of September, 2019. Called my uncle in Agbor....
To please go to the hospital in the morning, take his file there and take him to the airport. By the time he got to the airport and checked in, the airline rejected him and said he looked too sick to fly. I was already raging with anger Cos this meant the doctors in Agbor had....
Been giving us false updates on his progress. God used a lady doctor who was also a passenger on that flight to save the situation. She just waded in and claimed my brother was her patient and he needed to get to Lagos for better treatment. My brother told me he didn’t know her
From anywhere before that day and that he looked out for her when they landed in Lagos to thank her but he didn’t see her again. I drove my mum to the airport that day to pick him up, my immediate younger brother @Afribenny was with us too. For some strange reasons, we went to...
MM1 where Airpeace operates but that day Airpeace landed at MM2. When we turned around from MM1 to MM2, immediately my mum saw him, she began to cry and she just kept saying “they want to kill my child”. When I saw my brother, my heart told me this is not sickness, this is death.
But I didn’t want to increase the panic in the car, so I just kept my cool. He was looking so frail, his eyes were so yellow, they appeared green, he could barely stand up straight Cos of the pain in his abdomen. I immediately wondered how the doctors in Agbor thought this was..
Malaria and typhoid? I drove from the airport like a mad man chasing nothing to Cedacrest hospital in Victoria Island, called my dad on the way to tell him Emmanuel was seriously sick. Now this is where the story begins.... we got to the hospital and the doctor on duty attended..
To him, have him fluids and assessed his symptoms. In about 30mins, she called me to her office and told me she was going to refer him to LUTH. Yeah, the way your eyes opened is the way mine opened that very moment. “LUTH?” I exclaimed...”why?” And “why LUTH”?..she told me
She had noticed that he was having severe Renal and hepatic failure(in English, Kidney and Liver malfunction) and that their hospital cannot manage him. I later realized that this in itself was God working Cos her action meant a private hospital was passing up the chance to....
Make millions from us in order to save his life instead. So I called my Dad and told him the situation...”God forbid that I take any of my children to LUTH” my dad shouted angrily. He told me to ask the doctor to refer us to St. Nicholas hospital in Lagos Island instead and....
That he would bare whatever cost instead of sending him to LUTH, a “Death trap” as they were infamous for. The doctor told me that LUTH was the best bet Cos they had a wider spectrum of consultants and that if we take him to St. Nicholas, the consultants will still come from LUTH
My dad still insisted, so I remembered my best friend’s dad works as a senior doctor at FMC Yaba and I was sure he would be in a better position to advice me. I called him, and begged him to talk to the doctor at cedacrest so he could understand my brother’s condition better...
They spoke and he told me to take my brother to the Accident and Emergency spill over ward, that once we go with cash, we won’t get any better medical care in Nigeria than in LUTH. I was shocked Cos this was in direct contrast with their reputation or so I thought..
I convinced my dad and headed for LUTH all of us praying in the car throughout. We got to the spill over ward in LUTH which is a private ward of the Emergency section. We were told we could only be admitted through the A&E section before we are moved to private if we can pay..
By this time, Emmanuel could no longer walk on his own, so we literally had to carry him back to the A&E ward and wait for the doctor to assess him. We were outside for about and hour before it reached our turn and the doctor came to assess him. She asked him questions of his
Symptoms and asked if he’d travelled to certain states recently, which he answered No. he had been having bloody stools, bloody vomit and bloody urine since the Wednesday when the pain in his abdomen started and somehow the doctors in Agbor didn’t tell us and kept treating him...
She told us his symptoms were pointing towards one of the VHF(viral hemorrhagic fevers) and that the virologists would have to come and clear him from the Infectious diseases unit before he can be admitted into the ward. And that for now, we should all remain with him while...
Other patients around should stay away from us just for safety. It took a while for the Virologist to get to us, but he came and asked my brother several questions before running tests. Emmanuel insisted that his abdomen started paining him before the fever began, the doctor..
Was a bit confused Cos he insisted that VHF’s begin with fever for a couple of days before other symptoms follow, but what Emmanuel was telling him was a reverse and so he couldn’t conclude that he was having any of the VHF’s. He also felt empathy for him Cos he said if he...
Reports his findings inconclusive, we will all be quarantined till the test results for VHF’s return and that would be at least 24hrs and he could tell my brother was in visible pain. So he concluded he didn’t have any of the VHF based on the symptoms my brother told him
And the fact he hadn’t traveled to any of the states where outbreaks of Lasa fever has been prevalent. He wrote a report concluding that he could be suffering from acute fulminant hepatitis and that he should be attended to urgently. By the time we made payments and got him to..
The bed space, it was almost midnight and it had taken us over 4hours in LUTH to secure his admission. He was given first aid to stabilize him and then a doctor came to see him immediately. She recommended a series of tests which I had to take several blood samples to the lab...
That night. I told my parents to go home and come back in the morning as I will stay the night with him. See ehn! When you hear someone died from sickness, you will wonder what kind of sickness kills. Watching my brother on that bed was the most painful thing I have ever seen...
With my two eyes. The consultants started coming from Monday the 16th. When the first person came and saw his Liver function test result, he asked his junior if this test was from a living person or a corpse? He then told me that if my brother hasn’t died already, he can’t die..
The pathologists concluded he had forty fold increase in some of his liver enzymes. And that his liver and kidneys were acting deranged. To be honest, at this point I didn’t understand the medical implication but I did research on my phone and I began to understand the magnitude
Of the condition Emmanuel was in. The worst part was that the doctors couldn’t seem to understand what was triggering such malfunction since my brother wasn’t an alcohol or drug user. By the end of that Monday, the nephrologist who had seen his kidney test, told me he would need
Reno-Dialysis. It was like a nightmare Cos these were things I only used to see on TV. I mean I have made several random donations to people advertised to be having kidney problems, but I never really knew what dialysis entailed. I also didn’t want my parents sticking around..
Cos I didn’t want them to hear something that will cause their blood pressure to rise. So I had sacrificed all I had to do in order to be there in the hospital ward. I explained to my Dad that Emmanuel needed dialysis Cos his kidneys were in bad shape and the acute kidney injury.
Can only be cured by dialysis. He approved and he told me I should do whatever needs to be done and I shouldn’t wait for his approvals anymore. And so we began the dialysis. He was already on the most expensive antibiotics on this side of the hemisphere before hand and his Sepsis
Wasn’t abating....by this time, his urine and stool were dark as coke with crystals in them. I don’t want my folks to see this either, so I made sure they were never around when he used the toilet. When the doctors saw we could afford anything they asked for, they began....
Recommending the best techniques and ideas they had and we tried all...Cos they didn’t yet know what was causing his renal and hepatic failure...his liver and kidneys weren’t inflamed as confirmed by the MRI scan we did. We did two dialysis sessions in two days and no change
Instead, his blood creatinine serum began to climb. Team after team of doctors began to see him in turns, the entire hospital was interested in finding out what was making a 22yr old so sick. On the third dialysis session, one of the virologist visited him and took a sample...
Sent it to the VHF testing lab for examination. The result came back positive for yellow fever. This was after 6days in critical condition and oxygen mask throughout. Like 100 different tests and about 1Million spent already. My iwatch data for those first 5days
When they came back and told me he had to be relocated from the private ward to the IDU, Cos yellow fever was a contagious disease, I thought thank God at least we know what the problem is and we can commence treatment for it. Then the doctor says “there’s no cure for it”....
My mind went dark instantly. He saw the despair on my face and he then explained to me that the virus doesn’t stay more than 2weeks after incubation and that the symptoms can be managed until the immune system develops resistance to it. In all...
He needed 16 sessions of dialysis within one month before he regained his kidney function. Looking back now and remembering how we prayed for him to start urinating Cos he stopped urinating for nearly a week after his second dialysis session. Then he began to pee only blood 
...
...
Azin pure blood. I knew I had to try my best to work on his psyche to keep him positive and up best Cos I knew if he gave up on himself, his body would follow suit and he would have died surely. Emmanuel showed me bravery and resilience far above his age, Cos it could have been..
Too easy for him to resign to what was looking like inevitability. He peed only blood for about a week. And then very slowly some semblance of urine began to follow the blood as it got lighter. Even the nephrologists were sure his acute kidney injury would regress to chronic...
Which would have meant needing a transplant. See ehn! There’s God. I sincerely can’t recount all that happened here. His recovery was astonishing to doctors with years of experience. I kept telling my brother that the devil can only try and that he can’t succeed...
I told him I was sure even the devil didn’t plan for the kind of resilience we all showed as a family to nurse him back to health. I am not an emotional person and I can keep my cool in really bad situations but I cried most nights in that hospital those first two weeks...
I had begged God to take whatever was wrong with him and put it in me instead after all I am 29 and I don chop enough life, make em stand up go chop life sef make me I Dey that bed instead or let me even die in his stead. To show you how bad he was in, when I began processing..
His clearance from the hospital when the doctors gave the go ahead for his discharge, a lot of the doctors and nurses who had been seeing me for the 40 odd days I was running around the hospital were sure I was processing his clearance to the Morgue. Most couldn’t hide their..
Shock when I kept saying “we are being discharged”. I told everybody that cared to listen. I also called all the doctors who had been involved in his care on Christmas Day, the chief consultant asked me when last we came for dialysis after his discharge, he couldn’t hide...
His surprise when I told him he hasn’t needed any since we left and his kidneys had gone back to the function of a healthy human. The difference in these two tests just about two weeks apart astonished the whole nephrology department. God showed up in style.
I really want to thank all the staff of Lagos University Teaching Hospital Cos they were nothing like their infamous reputation. Genius level doctors and extremely professional nurses. At some point I had to ask if they were treating us nicely Cos we were lawyers in my family?
The system and poverty is what causes people to die in that place and not remotely connected to the perceived negligence of the staff. Dr. Akase, Dr. Udobor, Dr. Rex, Dr. Femi, Dr. Jegede, The IDU, The gastrointestinal team, the nephrology dept, the dept of medicine...
Nurse Rachel Awolumate( an Angel in human form, she became our mother, prayer warrior, motivational woman. Her belief rubbed off on us, she always told us Emmanuel was a miracle and that we shouldn’t worry), Nurse Glori, Nurse Anuna, Nurse Grace and the entire A&E spillover ward
May the Almighty bless you all immeasurably. @Its__Egie only God can bless your Dad, @its_jibs360 thanks for the support from you and your whole family. Your mumsy proved to be our mother. Everybody who was connected to us showed us support during this period....
Jimmy Shomolu, Dayo Akindipe were immense....Pastors, church members from churches we’d been transferred from like 10yrs ago. I cannot thank you all. God bless. @rccghq my father wanted to give this testimony at the just concluded Holy Ghost Congress, but he wasn’t allowed..
Pls share this testimony in all the churches, let the people of God know that when God heals, He heals completely. @threadreaderapp pls unroll.
