The day I walked in the valley of death

NAIROBI: It feels good to be back on these pages my dear reader. I agonised over whether I should make a disclosure on why I have been missing in action for the last three or so weeks.

My reason, like most of you, we hate loading others with our personal problems or tribulations and love. Instead, we like to confine our fears and challenges in life within the confines of our private orbits.

However, after a period of soul-searching, three factors mitigated for the personal, but awry narration I am about to share. First, in the decade this column has run, I have made fans and critics who look out for it.

Some come here because they love my style and bluntness, others because they disagree with me (most times) and they come to these pages to confirm as much... and both parties tell me as much.

If you remember, I have said before that the day everyone agrees with what I write, I would have no business writing anymore. This is because they are meant to provoke debate and in so doing, opinions have to clash, for it is in the clash of ideas that the best flourish and society moves on.

Like the Government Inspector supposedly travelling incognito in Nicholas Gogol's famous play, a State official candidly concedes, "we all have our little failings". Well, reality in life is that some have more than little, but this does not make those with less any better.

I felt by sharing just a little of my tribulation, you never know, the experience may help you in case you are victim of a similar misfortune. See, as I lay on a hospital bed for six days, two of which I was on oxygen, and as I was wheeled around on a wheelchair, I at one point felt with utmost fear and trepidation that the end had come.

Yet, it all began with what looked like a simple boil on the calf of my left foot.

As you will see shortly, never take anything to do with your health for granted. Like they say, if you think a mosquito is a small and insignificant insect, try sleeping in a room without a net with just one buzzing around your head.

In fact, in half an hour, you will be pacing around looking for it because they like the ears and the nose and seem to know when you are at the doorway of dreamland.

It happened like this; On May 4, I dropped off my daughter at school. The next day, I was on a flight to Lodwar from Wilson Airport for a series of official meetings, one being with an old friend and collegemate Governor Josephat Nanok. We flew back to Nairobi two days later feeling hot and tired. I brushed it off by blaming it on the Turkana heat.

The next day, I had a boil-like blister on my calf. The next day, I sought treatment when the pain and my body temperature shot. Friday found me gulping antibios and painkillers.

By Sunday, nothing had changed and I was back in hospital where with aching lymph nodes and an inflamed swelling, I was told it was a bite, probably by an insect and not a boil. My drugs were changed.

I went home confident the ordeal was over. Come Monday and Tuesday, the situation deteriorated to the point I suffered blurred vision, extreme pain, soaring temperature and confusion.

That Tuesday night I was in hospital from 4.30am and those who either saw or helped me that day, tell me that it was a dark day indeed. By evening, with tests giving worrying outcome, I was moved to Nairobi Hospital under the instructions of my doctor, Paul Etau.

These two days were critical because I remember little of what transpired except extraction of blood samples and being put through several testing machines. I would be in hospital for six nights, at times in deep slumber or in fits of delirium.

Yet at every point, tests showed I was mostly okay except with worrying liver enzyme activity that was suspected to be linked to the bite by the unknown.

Today, I am out but still undergoing check-up. By now you must be asking, so what bit me?

Scorpion and spider were ruled out because they inflict pain and I would have felt it. Then a snake may be, for there were two marks, but then to survive its attack after 72 hours is very rare.

Dr Etau and his colleague, a liver expert by the name Dr Mutie, suspect it was a tick. The possibility is that I was bitten by a tick that had sucked some scary thing like a snake or tortoise. I can't tell whether this happened in Turkana or Koibatek for I don't know. What I now know and which I thank God for, is that it kills.

Now, friends never take anything that happens to you for granted and even as you entrust all to God, listen keenly to the language of your body for it speaks loudly. Have a healthy day pal.