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1. I lost my dad May 3rd 2020. Prior to his demise, he was diabetic and suffered a brief illness that included shortage of breath. My mom took him to the hospital where he was admitted for a couple of days before he passed. She was beside him, taking care of him.
1. I lost my dad May 3rd 2020. Prior to his demise, he was diabetic and suffered a brief illness that included shortage of breath. My mom took him to the hospital where he was admitted for a couple of days before he passed. She was beside him, taking care of him.
2. His siblings and friends also came around while he was there. I couldn’t travel down to Benin City as the country was on lockdown but we spoke frequently, no cough, no sneezing.We lost him 2 days after he was admitted and the doctors told us he died from covid-19 complications
3. My curious mind couldn’t accept it because It seemed highly unlikely that he had it. I mean, he was a man-around-town but where could he have gotten it from? How would he have contacted it? None of his close friends had it and he didn’t pass it on to anyone.
4. My mom tested negative, their live in help tested negative and all his siblings and friends were negative. These are the people that were around this man and if covid is as infectious as they say, how come no one around him got infected?
5. Immediately he passed, the doctors instructed my mom to go on a 14 day isolation and in her grief, she had to drive herself home the next morning as she didn’t want to risk exposing anyone if really she was infected. Someone who just lost her husband she’d spent 38 years with!
6. She then would have had to grieve the first 2 weeks alone and afraid that she may have Covid-19! Her children wouldn’t have been able to go close to console her. Her friends and siblings wouldn’t have come close either.
7. The NCDC came to take her samples and they came back negative about 5 days later and it was then we could go be with her.
We asked for our dad’s test results from the hospital but they told us the file was state property as a Covid case and we couldn’t see the test results
We asked for our dad’s test results from the hospital but they told us the file was state property as a Covid case and we couldn’t see the test results
8. ...though they also took care of his bill, we didn’t have to pay the balance for his treatment.The only confirmation was from the doctor who told us verbally and the written death certificate from the hospital.
9. My dad was dead, and as the Binis say, “ed’uwu iro fo” (worries/thoughts end on the death day). The country was still partially open, and i was not in the mood to push a proper investigation.
Maybe I will on a later day
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Maybe I will on a later day
10. Today,I heard of the death of a family friend. She collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.They ruled her death as “complications from Cov-19”! How?!I’m not a doctor but her death looks like cardiac arrest as she’d been battling high bp for years.
11. I understand the grief and fear her family and loved ones are going through and the big question on my mind is “what if it really was a misdiagnosis?”
12. “The risk of love is loss and the price of loss is grief”. As the grief gradually eases, I can’t help but wonder if my dad was misdiagnosed and if a different therapy could have saved him.
13. The pain and loneliness in grief a misdiagnosis will cause is almost equal to that suffered from a loss itself. Covid-19 diagnosis done by the government in this country is so shrouded in secrecy. Why so? What kind of ulterior motive could there be in misdiagnosis?
14. A lot of people I know would rather self medicate than go to hospitals this period for the fear of being diagnosed or misdiagnosed as Covid patients including those who may genuinely have the disease. People even told us we shouldn’t have taken pops to the hospital!
15. These then make it even scarier to look at the big public health picture in Nigeria. How many needless deaths will we suffer this period because people chose not to go to hospitals?
16. What will it do to the trust levels the citizens have for the health institutions going forward? Without trust in public health institutions, how can we overcome public health challenges? The real cost of Covid-19 in Nigeria may end up too hard to bear in the long run!
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