Till Death Do Us Part…Until It Did

We’ll miss you

I never used to go to the library to read.

Instead, I’d visit it just so I could use the school’s free Wi-Fi. It’s also the reason the call went through.

October 2018, around 10-something a.m., was the year and the time.

I was in my fourth year of med school.

That’s when I got the call.

Strange.

We often chat over WhatsApp, but today she called. So you know I had to pick.

It was my aunt.

She was outside the country, and yet, she made the call. She likes calling me Kajinjin, one of my favorite nicknames. She’s also the one who says it best.

But when I answered the call, she didn’t say it in the way she normally did. Something was up.

Have you heard?

She asked me.

Heard what?

I asked myself.

I have come to know that I am usually the last one to get informed of the happenings in the family.

She then told me that my cousin had given birth the previous night, but that her child was not able to breathe properly.

They were on their way to Kenyatta National Hospital to receive proper care.

I had to cut my Wi-Fi appointment short.

Life ain’t always what it seems to be

I immediately got up and headed straight to the accidents and emergency section, where coincidentally, they were just getting in.

I didn’t meet the mother first. It was her sister. Her elder sister.

The three sisters were like Destiny’s Child. Always there for each other. It might have been destiny that we met when they arrived.

I saw the team wheel the child, with a portable oxygen tank, to the newborn unit. That’s when I saw his mother. Back then, it was the heaviest moment I’ve ever shared with her.

Her face was dry and heavy with worry, but when saw me, she broke down. I have never seen her cry. My heart sank.

But right now they wanted help. Not tears.

Merely a student, I followed up from that day on, despite my basic understanding of pediatric health management. The nurses in the newborn unit thought I was the child’s father. I’d visit almost every day.

That’s how much concern I had. But more than that, I began to see the weight of responsibilities humanity would set on me once I graduate as a doctor.

It hits differently if it comes from your family.

Five years down the line, I am in an emergency room, with a very capable team, resuscitating a patient.

At the moment, I don’t yet know who it is we’re trying to bring back to life.

I’d know soon enough.

Give anything to hear half your breath

I tend to think there’s a bridge, which can get burnt between life and death.

On this unusual bridge, the permanent residents are the doctors and nurses.

They try their utmost to save a life through active resuscitation.

With every chest compression and breathes given, they try to rescue the passersby, along this bridge.

Typically, doctors and nurses use surgery, medicine, and a pinch of hope to reverse the projected sequence of events.

Up until one of the doctors lies on the bed, and you now have to return the favour they have granted many lives.

I had barely arrived at work when the emergency bell rang. I hardly typed my login details into the hospital system when duty called.

I heeded the call.

When I arrived at the place, I saw a familiar face, searching for the pulse. He held the wrist with the calm face that only experience wields.

It was a face I had never seen in the room. Yet, here he was, holding onto the hand of another great surgeon.

But I still didn’t know who the surgeon was. The team on the ground had one mission — to burn that bridge linking life and death.

No pulse

One head nurse shouted.

There was spontaneous breathing but the heart was our concern. It wasn’t the normal rhythm we’re used to.

The sequence of events continued. Chest compressions, cardiac monitoring, administration of shocks. The synergy was evident.

Then…for a moment, we got a pulse.

You could feel the weight of despair lifted from our shoulders. But we were not there yet.

In less than a minute, the pulse was gone.

We achieved airway control. Now compressions turned continuous. Still, no pulse.

Clear!

Another dose of voltage was given.

What a life to take, what a bond to break

When the team downed their tools, the wails I heard were enough to send chills throughout the department.

It was then that I was told who it was we were resuscitating.

It was Dr. J. Mwangi, the general surgeon. I honestly couldn’t believe it. It then began to make a tonne of sense.

The faces I had seen in the room, the efforts to achieve some form of stability, the concern on everyone’s face.

And yet, despite the events of that morning, we were still supposed to attend to the line of patients waiting outside.

This was barely two days after I had received another call from my sister, telling me of yet another death.

My cousin had lost her son.

He was barely five years old.

The only scene that kept on playing in my head was how I had received them four years back. How I sneaked my relatives to see her and her child at night in KNH.

Now, she’d lost her loved one.

I was just from a Rotaract evening meeting, promoting a regional event due for November when I made the change of plans. I had to go to the hospital.

She has always been strong. It seemed unfair. It was her cries that welled my eyes.

Still, I had to hold my tears back.

She could not believe she would go back home without her son.

I felt guilty for hardly finding time to visit them when he was alive. Despite making plans, I never executed them, for several reasons. Regardless, I felt guilty.

Now he was gone, and I never got to see how pretty his face had grown to become. He had amazing hair, fair skin, and nails to rival that of any freshly manicured model. Yet, with all that beauty, lay there, motionless.

Turning cold.

The mother growing weak. The sister breaking down. The caregiver lost in deep thought.

That night, I got back home around 3 a.m., not knowing that another death awaited me that week.

Thinking of the day

I particularly remember the patient we managed when I was an intern.

She was in her second trimester, had been a victim of a road traffic accident, and sustained several abdominal wounds.

Cannulating her had been an issue, so I was always called to assist if her veins got blocked. The term we used in such cases is tissue. Her veins would tissue every so often.

I secured one on her thumb which went for days. In the process, I’d accompany Dr. J. Mwangi during his regular ward rounds, cleaned her wounds, and even scrubbed in the theatre with him.

One similar case was the first time I saw the small intestines contract and extend, in the most synergistic and well-choreographed dance I have ever seen. As somebody interested in microbes, I saw more than just muscles contract. I saw an ecosystem.

During the operation, he began sharing stories about a book he read. It turned out I was the only other person who had read that book in the room. It was Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman.

He then mentioned another book. I was still the only other person who had read it. It was by Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference, a book on negotiation. By the time he left us to close the abdomen, I was happy to have scrubbed with him.

If you love books, you get excited when you encounter another person who has read the same books as you. Even more, if the books of interest are not commonplace.

Now, I will never have a chance to discuss more topics with him.

Thinking of the day

When you went away

What a life to take

What a bond to break

I’ll be missing you

In less than three days, I had lost two people whose lives were intimately tied to my journey in medicine.

The first was my cousin’s son. I was there when he came to life, and now saw as the warmth from his body fades.

The second was a surgeon whose skill and calm demeanor I revered, whom we shared a common interest in books, but now lives through memories of what was but never what will be.

In a single week, I knew the repercussions of postponing plans, getting lost in the moment, and making memories.

I hope you get to do the same with the people you love when they are still alive.

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