I Have Only One Kidney
God forbid bad thing. But, what if?
My sister, Amina - the one that looks like we’re the same child born twice, is subscribed to The Other Side, and as soon as she got the last story in her mail and read, ‘I Have Only One Kidney’, she called me alarmed.
‘What do you mean you have only one kidney???’
Well, confession time.
I don’t.
Scans I’ve done prove the fact that indeed I still have two.
But, in 2020 I had a surgery and something was left in my stomach. Then, I had to have another surgery to get it out.
Based on that experience, I like to joke about how there’s a possibility I have one kidney left. Because what if those negligent doctors took one of my kidneys? We would never really know now, would we?
By now you know this story isn’t exactly about whether or not I have just one kidney. It’s actually about how I now have a fear of private hospitals in Lagos from that single experience.
If you follow me closely on Instagram or TikTok, you might have come across the video version of this story. The only difference is this time, there’s a bit more to the story, and as I type this, I’m somewhat afraid because I’ve never really spoken about this publicly.
I also have no intentions to get into too much nitty gritty details so, I’d leave you to make your deductions and assumptions. Anyway, enough of my internal ramblings. Let’s get into it.
About 7 hours before surgery
On March 27th 2020, I woke up with one of the worst stomach pains I’ve ever had. I’m usually terrible with dates but I remember this one because 2 days before, the 25th, was my father’s birthday, and that day, the 27th, was one of my very good friends’ birthday. And of course, 2020 is COVID year so that year is forever etched in my brain (and yours).
If you’ve never felt pain that leaves you feeling blind and disoriented, be grateful to God. I could not think straight, I could barely walk. I crawled to the living room and lay down on the sofa, checking my period tracker. My assumption was it must have been PMS cramps. But I’m one of the lucky ones and I never have terrible cramps so that seemed unnatural to me.
I had imagined this scenario all my life. Me - living alone, in a medical emergency, unable to think straight. And so, I follow my carefully curated Emergency 101 guide.
Book an Uber
Ask a friend to come over
Do not f*cking pass out!
The final one was well out of my control but, it’s one of my greatest fears. Passing out when I live alone and dying from something that I could have survived if I could just get myself to the hospital.
After using 2 tablets of Panadol and still feeling worse, I call my best friend - Raliat to come get me. She couldn’t make it in time and the way the pain was rapidly progressing, I did not want to wait till she got to mine. So, I booked an Uber, told her to meet me at the hospital and my Uber driver drove to Mayriam Ville - the closest private hospital I knew within my vicinity.
The Part of the Story I Usually Leave out
…is that in fact, I did not have to call Raliat that morning because I was living with someone at the time. The ‘someone’ in my house was my then-husband and I could have asked him to come along with me to the hospital.
Yes.
I used to be married.
The way that day played out, coupled with how our one year of being married had been, it’s no suprise that we eventually got separated.
How I knew I had given up was this: at the hospital, when I was filling out the outpatient form, at the part where you are asked about your marital status, I paused.
single
married
divorced
widowed
I thought about my life since I had been married. Reflected on how with every passing month I was feeling less and less like myself, and concluded being with that man was not a life I wanted. And so I ticked ‘single’.
That was the moment I knew it was never going to work out.
Ever since the ‘divorce’, I claim to be single. In fact, in my friendship circle, there’s a running joke about ‘the year that should never be named’, because I refuse to acknowledge the madness of that year of my life. Maybe it’s why I’m yet to completely heal. There are still tiny fragments of that year that follow me around as trauma. But, that year is locked away in a closet and I’ve thrown the key in the bushes.
Another thing that helps me be delusional and call myself ‘single’ as opposed to ‘divorced’, is because we never got married legally. Thankfully.
We did do a nikkah though. Shoutout to the tenets of Islam and how easy it is to go your separate ways when a marriage does not work.
A Baby and More
Now, back to the morning of the cramps and my almost lost kidney.
I’ve always used private hospitals - except for the two times I had to take out cavities in my teeth because private hospitals in Lagos never really have dentists on seat. When I got to Mayriam Ville - the private hospital I chose to go to that day, I did not envisage the series of craziness that ensued.
After getting to the hospital, and Raliat showing up, I fainted twice.
I fainted first while waiting for an Uber to go get a scan because the hospital did not have radiology facilities, and the doctor had recommended one. We thought that fainting spell was due to low blood sugar since it was past noon, and I hadn’t had anything for breakfast. My eating habits were also not the best then, and I was prone to having low blood sugar levels, so it made sense to assume that was the issue.
Can you tell me why I fainted again in front of the doctor’s office about 5 minutes after???
Now, in crazy situations, I'm never serious. I think it's a defense mechanism, a way for my mind not to descend into madness. I'm one of those people who laugh in grave situations, and so, I started to chuckle as they carried me to the treatment room. Raliat, on the other hand, was in panic mode, looking at me with so much worry on her face.
In the treatment room, a male doctor pressed around my stomach, asking me where I felt pain. I told him where, and he gave me a heads-up that he was going to check me with a needle.
He took the needle, stabbed it into my stomach, and it immediately filled up with blood. He did it again, and with another blood-filled syringe, he proclaimed I was bleeding internally.
(Cue subtle panic mode)
I was bleeding internally.
I was going into shock.
AND I had to go into ✨emergency surgery.✨
‘Emergency surgery ke?’
The doctor then goes on to ask me the last time I had my period and sends some of my blood off to the lab for a pregnancy test.
‘Pregnancy test???’
I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that something had burst in my stomach, and I was bleeding internally.
The pregnancy test came back negative, but the doctor still declared that I was having an ectopic pregnancy.
The ‘something’ that had burst in my stomach was a baby.
‘A baby!!!’
Amidst the doctor repeating that I needed to go into emergency surgery, and the realization that I was in fact in a critical condition, I ask Raliat to call my then-husband. He shows up 2 hours later.
I was mad because we lived in Ebute Metta and the hospital was in Bode Thomas. That was a 6 minute drive on a good day and a 30 minute drive if there was traffic.
Months later, Raliat and I would talk about that very moment - how scared she was, how I was in autopilot mode, how my then-husband told her he took 2 hours because he was at home tending to the rice I had put on the stove before leaving. Rice that he could have taken off the gas so he could make it to the hospital quickly. How it’s crazy that he chose to eat and take a bath before coming. In such dire situation.
And how in that moment he had asked her, ‘Why don’t you advise your friend?’
At the moment when I was legit dying - going into shock - about to be operated on the thing that was running through his mind was - ‘Why don’t you speak to your friend more to act better?’
Raliat and I concluded that the entire way he handled it was insane. Pure insanity.
Yorubas have this adage that says, ‘Tí a bá n jà koń ṣe bíi ti kú’, and it translates to ‘if we are fighting, when it becomes a matter of life or death, the fighting becomes irrelevant.’
You see the reason I had to call Raliat that morning was because he and I had an argument the day before. That happened often. We fought about everything and anything. And that day I was not ready to do that which is expected of a Yoruba, Muslim wife - apologize and let peace reign.
I had thought I was going to do a quick run to the hospital and be back in a jiffy. So, I told him I was off to the hospital and left. When the craziness at the hospital happened and I had reached the point of surgery, my expectations from him was:
‘Tí a bá n jà koń ṣe bíi ti kú’.
I thought he would hear ‘wife’ and ‘surgery’ in the same sentence, worry, and rush to the hospital. But to him, the fight was never irrelevant. Many many months later he and I would sit down and have a conversation about this moment, and his response would be ‘I did not take permission from him before I left home from the hospital and so he was angry’. Permission???
There is nothing I did not see (or rather ‘hear’) in that marriage.
Welcome to the mind of the man I married.
I usually think back and wonder if maybe he had shown even a twinge of care in that moment, I would have still been in that marriage.
I did eventually go into surgery. Not like I had a choice.
The Surgery
The moments before I went into the surgery room are hazy. I was going to have an emergency laparoscopic surgery. I remember being thankful that I came to the hospital when I did. I also remember having a conversation with the doctors, jokingly asking them to film the entire process because I thought it would be interesting to finally see my insides.
They gave me spinal anaesthesia to numb me. The plan was to keep me awake during the surgery and I remember my brain feeling all woozy. I was awake but barely. Like that feeling when you just wake up the morning after a very stressful day, groggy, slow - your brain still booting.
Not too long after I was forcefully jerked from my lulled mental state - alarmed with a certainty that my stomach was being cut open with a saw. My anaesthesia had failed. Suddenly, I could feel all the pain. Suddenly, there was no more peace. I remember pulling the doctor in a tight grip and shouting!
‘I can feel everything!’
‘I can feel everything!!!’
That’s the last thing I remember saying before I passed out.
Except this time my wooziness wasn’t peaceful. My brain thought if my belly was being cut up I had to be in danger. And thus my subconscious was plunged into what I can only describe as the worst lucid dream of my entire life.
I dreamt that I was being dragged by an unseen force underground through damp earth. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. In my subconscious I was certain this was what dying felt like and that the unseen force was dragging my sinful arse to hell.
I woke up a few hours later, groggy from all the drugs, happy to see my mother’s face smiling down at me.
Post Surgery: Everything Goes South
I’ve always used private hospitals - except for times when I had to take out cavities in my teeth because private hospitals never seem to have dentists on seat. I used to believe in the competency of private hospitals because growing up it’s all I knew. Me, ailing with malaria, sitting in the reception of R-Jolad, our family hospital, waiting for my turn to be called, while my mother sat beside me worried sick. Me, certain I was going to feel better once a doctor saw me.
But we all heard stories of things like scissors or gloves being discovered in people’s bellies after they had surgeries. Growing up, it felt like a far-fetched thing. Like the type of thing that only happened to ‘other people’. Little did I know I was also ‘other people’. That something similar was about to happen to me.
Four days after the surgery, I’m told to go home to recover fully.
I did not return home to my then-house in Ebute Metta. I could barely walk and was not in the right state of mind to climb up or down the three flights of stairs in my apartment in Ebute Metta.
I also did not return home to my then-house in Ebute Metta because I did not want to see my then-husband. A man who could not care for himself, relied on me to make him breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and ate food from his mother whenever I was not home was not one I was going to trust to take care of me in such a vulnerable state. So, I went home with my parents.
I go home, but I am not recovering. My stomach looks and feels bloated. I cannot manage to keep anything down, and I am getting weaker and weaker day after day.
The night everything goes completely south, I am in my mother’s room eating slices of watermelon straight off the aluminum tray it was cut in. My mother and I are gisting about something I can no longer recall. But the moment is forever engraved in my memory because I realize my mother was feeling some sense of relief. Her baby was finally eating something. I am happy that she is happy. It was a good bonding moment, and I even asked for a second helping. It was so satisfying to see some worry ease off her face.
After we rounded off our gist session, I go to bed and try to sleep, but I couldn’t because my stomach started to hurt again. I dismissed it initially, hoping it was nothing. I could hear my mum, dad, and brother faintly having a conversation downstairs. I did not want to disturb them for something that might have been nothing.
And so I call Amina, the sister I look exactly like with the hope that I can talk with someone until my pain diminishes. As soon as she hears the sound of my voice, she asks alarmed, ‘What’s wrong?!’
The worry in her voice hits me and I start crying, telling her my stomach is hurting again. She, in her usual state, enters mothering mode and immediately dials my father’s number. This is another moment I’m grateful for. Because, left to me, the stomach ache was nothing.
Before this experience, I was a serial self-diagnoser. I knew when I had malaria, I knew when my symptoms were ulcer, I knew when I had food poisoning. I thought I understood my body well enough, and any other form of illness I chucked to ‘stress from work’.
I did not chuck this stomach ache to anything other than my body being in recovery mode. Of course, some things were bound to hurt sometimes.
After my dad receives the call from Amina, I hear my parents run upstairs, and a few minutes later, we are on our way to the hospital past midnight. The drive is chaotic.
My mother is in the back of the car with me lying on her leg, crying. She is running her hands over me, praying to Allah, while my father is in the driver's seat hyperfocused on getting us to the hospital. I’m crying but intermittently complaining loudly to my mother to stop rubbing my feet and my head in her prayers because it’s only making me more uncomfortable. It feels like a scene straight out of a movie.
We drive to the hospital, and the doctor is not on seat. A thing we would all see turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It’s the height of COVID, and borders from Ogun to Lagos are closed. My parents live in a small town on the outskirts of Lagos called Mowe, so our other options, which were to drive to the hospital where the surgery was done, were impossible. Another blessing in disguise.
My dad makes the decision that we go to OSUTH, a government-owned hospital in Sagamu where his sister, my aunt, works. And so we drive there in the thick of the night, on bumpy roads that have no street lights.
If I ever complain about the lack of a relationship I have with my dad, this night and the many days and nights after that I was stuck in the hospital are a reminder that although we have no relationship, he does love me. He’s just not a great communicator.
At OSUTH, the doctors say they cannot treat me unless a deposit is made. They do not use a POS or accept transfers, and the only option my father has is to walk around in the middle of the night in search of an ATM.
The Osuth Experience
My First two weeks in OSUTH were filled with series and series of tests and scans. I was not allowed to eat and was placed on fluid. Every day, I spent about 22 hours lying in bed with my phone, a book and my mother sitting one foot from me. Only getting up to do yet another test.
I couldn’t even go to the toilet. I had a dedicated nurse who came to change my bedpan from time to time. And, of course, taking a bath was out of it. My mother lovingly wiped me down with a wet cloth every morning, and my father and brother, Dire, drove down every morning from Mowe to Sagamu with food for my mother and books or more clothes for me, depending on my request for the day.
At this point, it had been determined that I had sepsis, and I was being pumped full of antibiotics, but the source of the sepsis was yet to be determined. All my test results kept coming back as fine.
That’s one of the worst states to be in.
I had never wanted something to be wrong with me so badly.
By the third week, after passing yet another scan that said nothing was wrong with me, I noticed my mother was sadder than usual. A doctor walks into the ward, asks her to leave, and then tells me I would need to have another surgery.
Up until this moment, I had stayed strong with my only focus being, ‘I just need them to figure out what is wrong with me so I can return to my life’. Another surgery meant another scar. I was still coming to terms with the scar from the first surgery. I felt broken and finally let myself cry after all this time.
The doctor that came to break the news of another surgery talks to me in a soothing voice, telling me it’s all for the best, reminding me that this is surely a step towards recovery. Minutes later I am laying in bed again and she’s giving me a shave, preparing me for surgery.
When my mother comes back in, I have a smile plastered on my face. She couldn’t see how broken I felt inside. There were tears in her eyes, and I jokingly called her a 'cry baby,' telling her I was fine. I was being strong for her.
The second surgery felt a lot different.
I was wheeled through a long corridor and into the operating room. There were a handful of doctors around my bed, and the anesthesiologist was a woman who smiled at me before she put me to sleep. That’s the last thing I saw before I passed out.
I woke up the next day feeling energetic. When I wake up, I’m in the ICU, and my parents were nowhere in sight. I find my phone tucked to my side and I give my sister in Canada a call. Halima, the one I currently live with. It’s a video call, and she’s so happy to see my face. Just grateful to know my surgery went fine.
My mother comes into the room alarmed that I’m awake and on a call! She quickly takes the phone from me, and I’m prompted to lay back down.
ICU is amazing. I’m doted on. A nurse checks on me almost every hour. I’m given tons and tons of drugs that don’t make me feel any pain. I’m on cloud nine.
Days later, my mother tells me during the surgery they found a gauze pack wedged in my belly forgotten from the surgery that was done by the private hospital in Lagos. Mayriam Ville left a whole gauze pad in my stomach cavity.
My mother refused to show me photos, but I stole them from her phone later, curious to see what a gauze pad inside my stomach must have looked like.
Now you know why I have the one kidney joke. It’s due to negligence. Because if they can leave an entire gauze pack in my belly, what’s to say they couldn’t have carted one of my kidneys away?
I didn’t see my stomach scar until much later. I was released from the ICU to the general ward four or five days after. I spent most of my time there asleep, high on painkillers and sleep meds.
The day before I was released was gloomy. A young girl who was in a coma died. She was pregnant. She met me in that ward, and she left me there too. It’s insane that she left to another realm. Her bed was just 6 feet from mine. I think about her from time to time. So young. So sad an occurrence. I have a poem I wrote about her along with other poems I wrote during my time at OSUTH.
In the general ward, I’m finally allowed to eat. General hospital doctors can be kind. They were always sending me free food. One doctor sent me fruits occasionally. An apple today, cut up watermelon another day, mangos the next. One doctor always came around to joke with me during ward rounds. I was finally feeling better.
I eventually got the courage to look at my stomach after it was being treated one day, and at first glance, I knew I was going to have to do a lot of work to love my stomach again. I could still see the inside of my belly. My suture was just at 4 points. Imagine a 13-inch slash being stitched at just 4 intervals. That’s just 5 smaller slashes. They needed all the fluid to get out and for it to start scabbing. They needed to monitor it as an open wound to ensure it didn’t get infected.
Kai! I felt like raw meat.
But on the bright side, I finally got to see bits of my insides.
Approximately five days later, those 5 tiny slashes are stapled together, painfully, with no anesthesia. In the last week of April, I was allowed to go home with scheduled hospital appointments to track my progress.
My ugly stomach eventually healed beautifully and I currently have a scar that looks like a tree in the fall. Leafless but still pretty.
During my entire time at OSUTH, my then-husband only came to see me once. His excuse? COVID.
There was a woman in my ward whose husband came to see her every day—gisting with her, caring for her, loving her.
After I went home to my parents from the hospital, I stayed with them in Mowe for a few more weeks and then returned to my then-husband for another year. I can tell you why, but that’s probably going to be another day, in another story.
In my opinion, this story has run too long. Don't you think?
People usually ask me if I ended up suing the first hospital - Mayriam Ville. I didn’t. I’m such a ‘move on from your problems’ type person. Some day I wish I did though. Just to serve as a reminder that doctors should infact be more careful with the lives of people they are in charge of.
If you enjoyed reading this, it makes me glad. This is definitely the most vulnerable piece I’ve shared so far. So please don’t come and be asking me questions on Instagram o! 💀
But you can leave your comments below. 🤗❤️
Now, next week would you like to read about Why I Don’t Want Kids 👀 or My Internal Worries About If I Have Daddy Issues or Not? 🤭
Lost for words. Almost every paragraph had me gasp. Wow, Alhamdulillah for your life, so happy you’re still here to share this story. And your then-husband, oooh what a nightmare, grateful to God for giving you the strength to leave. Ooh and I love your family. Thank you for sharing and continuously showing up Hamda, love you always🫶🏾. May your happiness know no bounds. Sending you loadssss of hugs and love❤️
Unrelated but since I discovered you now live in my city, I always prayed to one day see you so I could give you a big hug
I was in shock all through. One would never knowwwww. Thank you for sharing your light with the world even with everything you have been through. You are such a light😊