I was given five years to live

Renee Ngamau (Capital FM presenter, Life and Business Strategist) was busy building her law career and getting a PHD when she was interrupted by discovery of a growth in her brain. She tells of how she survived and how the experience changed the course of her life.

Many people can easily recognised Renee Ngamau’s voice, with its distinct British accent - picked up from living in London, for more than ten years - that enchants anyone who tunes into Capital FM in the morning but few know the death sentence she received a few years ago.

“My epiphany moment, the real moment to choose what I wanted to be for the rest of my life, which was the best thing that happened to me but was delivered in a way that I would never wish upon anyone. My epiphany moment involved the diagnosis of a growth in my brain,” she begins her story.

Renee had a promising career as a lawyer in one of the best cooperate commercial firms in London. “Working there was a complete paradigm shift. Most people, in this country, will put in long hours, well, in these law firms one puts in days. We would go in on a Tuesday and go home on a Thursday. I was chasing the ultimate cooperate dream, conquering the world one merger acquisition at a time. Then one day I got up to walk and blacked out. I was not sick before so there was no logical explanation,” she says.

The doctor could find no obvious problem and so sent her for a scan. “He showed me a scan of a normal brain and then he showed me a scan of my brain and I could not see the difference on account of having flunked biology,” Renee adds jokingly, “then he literally pointed to an area and said do you see this shadow, can you notice on a normal brain you do not have it. Nothing wakes you up in life like the doctor telling you that you have something that you should not have.”

The shadow was a growth on her brain the size of a fist that was causing the black outs and it would continue to grow. He told her she would be dead in five years and that the condition was degenerative, so she would get sicker as the disease progressed.

“I sat there waiting for him to go like, ‘Psyche!’ because I had to go to work and I did not have time for this! Also I had started a PHD and I did not have time for this conversation! I really did not have time for this... except it was happening to me!”

In disbelief, Renee sought a second opinion from another doctor, who gave her the same prognosis. She decided to seek a third but this time from a doctor in the US who was so highly-sough-after that his schedule was booked months in advance. But Renee got on a plane and went anyway, not knowing if she would see him.

“Sometimes in life you will do something insane and makes no sense to anyone including your normal sensible self. But you need to do it. So I went to New York. Serendipity is everything because four months before my partner had taken me to meet Les Brown and we had gotten along like a house on fire, Les had given me his number and said to call him, if ever I was in the States.”

Because Renee did not know anyone in New York, when she arrived, she called Les and he invited her to a session he was giving that evening. Just before concluding he invited her on stage to greet the audience, and the worst possible thing actually happened. She blacked out again.

“We sat in his kitchen and I told Les my predicament, he happened to know a doctor who knew, personally, the renowned doctor I had come to see, so serendipity is everything.” Unfortunately, the doctor gave her the same prediction.

It was serendipity

“Then Les invited me to lunch with some of his friends although I was feeling sorry for myself and in no mood to talk, I went anyway. He told me to tell the guys my story. After narrating, there was silence all around the table. Then one guy burst out laughing, saying - I wish I had your problems. You are going to die anyway, so get over it. The most important thing is what are you going to do between now and the time you have been told you will die – I was stunned by this reaction.”

Renee found out that this was not just a group of friends but a support group ran by Les for people with cancer or on remission and that the guy who had spoken was actually going through cancer treatment. That single reaction instantly changed Renee’s perspective on life.

“If I was going to die, I would not go down easy. I would go down kicking. Literally when I died they would have to drop a coin or check twice to make sure I was really dead,” so Renee made another important decision that day, she decided to have a baby.

“I wanted to leave a legacy, but I had been told that in my condition, I could not carry the baby to term. To make it worse, prior to being diagnosed, I had had several miscarriages, to the point I knew nurses at the hospital. But I decided I would go ahead anyway. After conceiving, the situation was so precarious the doctor could not give us a date for the caesarian. We just took it a day at a time. Eventually, in the eighth month he gave us a date, but he told us that I might not survive the birth. So I wrote letters for my child to read when he grew up, in case I died on the operating table,” Renee narrates.

In spite of this dire prediction, Renee did not want a solemn mood in the theatre, she decided she was going to have fun, so they played jazz (her favourite music) and people were joking and laughing all around her. Eventually, the baby boy was born.

“The doctor kept me in hospital for observation expecting me to take a turn for the worse, then the first day went by, then the second, then the third day. He had to come to terms with the fact that he had no reason to keep us in hospital any longer,” Renee says.

“After the birth of my son, I got an even greater impetus to keep fighting because now I wanted to live long enough to bring him up. Later, I decided to have another child. My partner, however, did not want that because he felt it was too dangerous. But you know when a woman decides...” Renee says with a cheeky smile.

So she went on to have another child then continued the naturopathic form of treatment which is meditation, exercise, eating healthy and having a zero tolerance for stress. She went on to live past the five years the doctors had predicted. The growth eventually disappeared but Renee’s caveat is to always seek advice, educate yourself about your condition and make your own informed considered choice. Now, almost eight after the diagnosis, Renee is in pristine health which has left her doctors flabbergasted at the degree of recovery.

After coming back from the brink, Renee is using that experience to help others, as her Facebook page declares, step into your greatness, “through the experience, I realized I wanted people to know that there are their own source of power, to be happy and to be at peace no matter the circumstances. And the vehicle that I found was best conducive for this was life coaching. So I help people discover their purpose. Imagine you are in an office where everyone is plugged in to something that fulfills them personally imagine the levels of productivity, now extrapolate that by 47 million, it’s a crazy dream. I do not know if I will ever see it in my lifetime but I want to know that I was part of the people who played in that arena. Then I can just go, you do not have to drop coins,” Renee says laughing heartily.

Everything Renee does is drenched with purpose - even the Renee and Maqbul radio show, “apart from music and advertising I try and drop in these little ideas of how we (Kenyans) could be different. It’s important to do this because sometimes we can get carried away with what we do not have that we want.”

Renee beat a life-threatening disease and now uses that experience to touch the lives of anyone who crosses her path; it’s no wonder she has been recognised by the Graca Machel Trust as a champion for Women in Media Network.

“Life happens. What you make of it determines not only your next course of action, but determines fundamentally whether whatever has happened becomes the platform for your greatest break through or breaks you down. Even if you have been broken down for long, all that has happened is that you did not catch the lesson so learn the lesson and move on. As long as you’re not dead, no one is hopeless. It’s not over unless you have made it over,” she says.