TRUE-LIFE STORIES WITH FUNMILOLA SOTUMINU
WHEN my daughter started her illness about six weeks after birth, I did not take it seriously at first, until I started noticing her pale skin.
She was taken to the paediatrician for routine check at about this time and the specialist’s suggestions were similar to mine, except that she noted that the cause of her persistent high temperature was immediately unknown.
She was on exclusive breastmilk, so there was little fear of food poisoning. But after about eight weeks, she refused breastmilk and began losing weight instead of adding. She went back to about 2.8kg, from a weight of 4.7kg at three weeks.
I was worried, but being a consultant myself, I decided to initiate a specialists’ conference on her case. Many of my colleagues, especially paediatricians, tried different therapies, which did not work.
One of them, after series of tests, said the tests might be inaccurate, and suggested, inferring from a previous case in history, that we should carry out an exchange transfusion on the baby as the symptoms we were confronted with pointed at what we could refer to as blood abnormalities.
An exchange transfusion is a procedure in which the patient’s blood is drained and replaced with plasma or donor blood. When the deliberations were onging, mother and child had been admitted in a paediatric hospital, owned by one of my senior colleagues.
I had told the doctor and the nurses on duty not to tell my wife about our decision, that I would break the news to her in a way that would not scare her. But somehow, she saw the case file beside the bed, just before the ward round, and immediately started calling my mobile line frantically.
When I saw her repeated calls, I knew something was amiss. She normally would call once or twice and allow me to call back. At first, I thought she wanted to pass the bad news that the child had died across to me. But something told me that, though my daughter’s condition was very bad, she still had some chance if only we could exchange what we perceived as life-threatening infected blood.
I was in the theatre all the time she was trying to reach me, and by the time I called her back, I could not reach her again. I thought that she might have had a flat battery and decided to rush down to the hospital to find out what was happening.
On getting to the hospital, I headed for the special ward, where I had left them, and saw people gathered, talking about a particular event. Many of them knew me, so immediately they saw me, they went in different directions after greeting me hurriedly.
I knew immediately that something was terribly wrong. To confirm my fear, I did not meet my wife in the ward. The bed was clean and the locker empty.
So, I went to the medical director’s office. It was there that I was told that my wife had, probably, seen the note that there would be an exchange transfusion on her baby, and decided to discharge herself. The doctor said she made a lot of trouble and said she would kill somebody if they did not allow her to take her daughter away.
She accused the doctors of wanting to kill her daughter, saying that they had also bought me over. I paid the bills and went straight home. I had thought I would meet her there since her line was still not reachable.
But she was nowhere to be found. I started making calls to all her relatives and mine, including some of her friends. But no one had seen or heard from her. I went back to the hospital to close some case files and also hand over properly to the next senior doctor. I then went back home to think properly about my next line of action.
At about 10pm, my wife’s call came through. She told me that she was in Oshogbo and that I could not reach her all the while because of the poor network on the express. I asked her what she went to do in Oshogbo and she told me that she had taken our daughter for proper care; that she had seen that her problem was not medical. I was enraged. I demanded to know why she would take my daughter for spiritual help without consulting me, her father, and said she should give me a description of where they were so that I could come and meet them.
She said there would be no need for me to come as the baby was already being treated, that all I needed to send was my urine (the first one for the day). She added that she would send someone to me very early the next morning to get it from me.
When I saw that force would not solve the problem, I agreed with her to send the person, assuring her that I would make my urine available. Meanwhile, when she dropped, I called my aunt and narrated everything to her.
She said we should prepare to go with the person she would send, but that we should not let her know this. I told my aunt, that knowing the woman I married, she would have briefed the person, in strong terms, not to allow me follow him or her or know the place. So, I went for a Plan B.
I reported the case to a nearby police station. I said my wife and child were missing. A friend then arranged some mobile police officers, who slept in my compound that night. I did not believe what I saw the next morning.
At about 6am in the morning, the security guard said a woman was at the gate to see me, from my wife in Oshogbo. I told him to let her in. I was shocked when the woman turned out to be the matron that my wife had hired to replace her when she was told to stay on bed rest. Immediately I saw her, I signalled to the policemen to come out.
They seized her and took her phones. The senior officer told her that if she did not cooperate with them, they would ‘waste’ her. We immediately got into two cars and started heading towards the express.
My aunt wanted to follow us but I told her to stay back at home. We gave her the senior officer’s number, in case she wanted to reach me and could not get through to me on my mobile.
The officer and the matron were with me in my own car. After about 30 minutes, the officer told the matron to call my wife and tell her that she had taken the urine and was heading towards Oshogbo. She did exactly as she was told and we kept on going.
When we got to Ibadan, the matron said we were not going to Oshogbo, that my wife was in Jebba, Kwara State. I was not surprised that she was not in Oshogbo. I knew she would not want to tell me where exactly she was, but I did not bargain for what we met in Jebba.
To be continued…
