Startling bi-symmetrical swellings on woman’s legs

 By Gardy Chacha

It began in 1968, when she was already a woman. Back then, just like many would-be-sufferers, she never thought it held grim ramifications on her part. Jerida Joash, who is now at 78, contracted a condition unbeknown to many, including medics who attended to her at the first phases of her leg swelling.

“My feet began swelling but I didn’t think it would be something to worry about,” she recalls. “But with time, what I thought was a passing illness deprecated me into a life of pain, until now that I have lost the ability to walk on my own.”

Vividly, she remembers days preceding the time her legs began swelling. She says: “I felt sick one day and experienced high fever. My body felt awkward and the pain emanated from all muscles in my body. As the fever resolved with time, I began feeling tingly sensations on my legs and then a small swelling appeared at the corner of my pelvis. My legs began enlarging afterwards.”

Medical services hadn’t trickled to Kenyan countryside in the 60s, and Jerida, who comes from Emusire in Kakamega County, continued to harbour the condition while hoping that her swelling feet would whittle down. However, she was astonished to realise that no reprieve came, leaving her feet to continue increasing at an alarming rate. She would then try her luck with herbs but that too couldn’t hack the menacing mound of puffy tissues enclosed by a taut skin.

Asked if she thinks she could have been bewitched she responds: “I don’t think so; why would someone bewitch a poor woman like me. After all, had it been the case, then I should be dead by now since I have stayed for four decades with this nagging condition.”

NOT ELEPHANTIASIS

On first look, her condition could easily hoodwink the eyes that she has gargantuan Elephantiasis, but no: Doctors who examined her at a free medical camp ran by Safaricom Foundation in conjunction with Kenya Diabetes Information Centre said that several aspects of her condition downplay possibilities that she has the parasite-inflicted illness. One physician who didn’t want her name mentioned (since doctors were still on strike), said that: “What Jerida’s symptoms are showing us is that the systems afflicted are the same as in a patient of Elephantiasis, but the cause is likely to be different.”

Elephantiasis is a condition that manifests as gross enlargement of an area of the body, usually the limbs. Other areas commonly affected include the external genitals. Elephantiasis is caused by obstruction of the lymphatic system, which results in the accumulation of a fluid called lymph, resulting in a massive swelling at the organ or area of the body, where filariasis has laden. However, the doctor said, it (more often than not) affects a single limb, rarely – and almost never - both.

LACK OF MOBILITY

The doctor argued that in Jerida’s case, both of her limbs are affected but symmetrically, such that the progression of disease on one side closely matches the other side. In addition, on pressing of the flesh, it doesn’t form pits (a depression of skin that slowly reverts to its original position). The skin on Jerida’s feet looked crackly and sodden.

 But that doesn’t worry her because she has something grimmer to worry about – the fact that the condition has deprived her of mobility.

With the effects of old age pressing hard on her already weakened body; she can’t attend to her needs since years back when the condition relegated her to briskness. On a lucky day, she is able to muster her strength and shield her frail body using a Jerrican. “If I can find someone to take this away from me” says Jerida, “they would give me a chance to be happy in my sunset years.” While it still puzzles doctors who have attended to her, she keeps hoping that it’s not another one of the world’s medical conundrums.