When destiny decides you must eat lemons

Happy New Year fellow Kenyans. Going by all the nauseatingly optimistic Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter posts, many of you welcomed the New Year with joy, resolve, and excitement. Me? Not so much.

I walked into 2019 with pneumonia, which would be the second time I’ve had this miserable disease since I was three years old. That other time I can’t really remember, but with the last case, I thought I was dying.

It felt like someone was sticking a dull knife in my chest and twisting it every time I took a breath.

In the meantime, pain was radiating up and down my left arm, and the veins felt like they were compulsively dilating and constricting, forcing blood to spurt through the system as if someone was spraying my organs with a garden hose.

At the same time, my head felt like all the quarry workers in the world were breaking rocks between my ears.

My eye lids were so heavy that I had to roll that pounding head backwards to shift them upwards.

And even then, my vision was 50/50. As all that was going on, my temperature was careening between hot and cold, taking me from hot flushes to debilitating chills, from one second to the next.

At one point, I thought for sure I was having a heart attack, a stroke, or something. It was all very dramatic.

In the end, being the typical Kenyan that I am, I decided that I had malaria, so I sent for some malaria drugs, which I took religiously, but nothing doing.

The joints still felt like they were wrapped in barbed wire and my blood, like soup that was being boiled and then cooled over and over again. Now I had no choice but to go to the hospital.

Paper bag

On my first visit, the doctor asked me a bunch of questions, examined my tummy and chest area, listened to my heart, and then -- drum roll please -- sent me for a bunch of other tests.

So much for all that poking and prodding. An hour later, the tests came back showing I had a bacterial infection. On asking what kind of infection it was, the doc said it was ‘just an infection’.

Fair enough, I thought, as long as he was going to make it stop I was at peace with it. So off I went with a potpourri of prescribed pills carefully packed in a brown paper bag.

As soon as I got home, I quaffed the first dose and waited expectantly for a heavenly choir to appear in the sky singing a song of healing.

Nothing doing! Twenty fours later I was still walking through the valley of the shadow. And please note, I had dealt with my 4-year-old’s endless requests the whole time.

 Stood up

‘Mama, please come and change the channel. I want tea and bread. When can I go and play with my friends? Can I go to the shop? Can I go to my cousin’s house?’ And on and on and on.

I’d say to her, ‘I’ll help you in a minute, just be patient’. Then she’d ask, ‘What does it mean to say patient?’ And it would feel like every normal blood cell I had left was dissolving in my despair.

Eventually, I ended up in the hospital for round two. After more poking and prodding and a closer perusal of the previous test results, the doctor advised that I had a ‘very serious infection’ but he was still reluctant to give the invader a name.

I insisted. Pushed into a corner, the doctor lifted one shoulder casually, assumed a deliberate air of nonchalance, and said, ‘Well, if you want me to give it a name, then I would say that it’s pneumonia.

But don’t worry yourself; you take these new drugs first. If they don’t work, then we can start thinking about x-rays and things like that.’

My impulse was to laugh nervously, but I couldn’t breathe. So I stood up slowly, clutched my left arm to my aching ribcage, and went in search of the pharmacy.

Long story short, I survived pneumonia for the second time in my life. This is not something I take for granted. Everything that matters has been thrown in sharp focus.

This is why I refuse to waste my breath pontificating about future events like the second coming, Donald Trump’s wall with Mexico, Arsenal’s chances of winning the league, the possibility of Dennis Oliech joining Gor Mahia, Luhyia unity … and 2022. Especially 2022.

Ms Masiga is Peace and Security Editor, The Conversation Africa