When I opened my eyes on 23 December 2015, with mild trepidation I knew that it was time for me to finally go home. The Harare Hospital staff had done all they could do for me despite having their hands tied behind their backs in the face of a menace that brought dread to their kind hearts and the families of anyone who fell under the shadow of this mysterious killer.
My family had made the decision that it was better for me to finish the healing process at home and as Christmas was a few days away it would do me a world of good to raise my spirits. I definitely needed a bit of cheering up after the month I had gone through.
For the last time, I looked around the hospital ward, which was shrouded in darkness. I had become bitterly used to this emptiness, and what surprised me was how the colours had gradually shifted from bright pinks and soft blues to sombre greys and finally to a velvet black.
The scans had called it optic atrophy, this is when the optic nerve is damaged and yes leading to visual impairment.
Meningitis was a word that I had rarely heard about, it was yet another ailment among many health concerns in Zimbabwe which are too often neatly filed away, and you would never notice it existed, until one day you find it laid in your in tray. I guess that filing process began for me in February 2015 when I travelled to Ghana for a work Conference, after returning home I experienced a mild fever, which at the time I put down to adjusting to the humid climatic conditions in Accra. Fast forward to early November, Zimbabwe was hit by severe heat waves.
In the face of the heat I occasionally had mild headaches which I attributed to the famed African sun, although all along I was made to believe that the sun is the same everywhere. I obviously did what would come naturally in these circumstances, drinking lots of water and sleeping it off.
Unfortunately, the headaches persisted and I had to be hospitalized. Upon hospitalization delirium set in, and I remember one of the things that kept coming into focus in my mind was a conspiracy that the Doctor attending me was in actual fact trying to do me in. It did not help that my family and friends were oblivious to my predicament. In hindsight as I reflect on this episode and my state of mind, I shudder to think how far I was gone and the agony that was going through everyone who came to see me on my hospital bed.
A lumbar puncture procedure soon followed and this was the nail on my coffin, in my defence… there is a silent misconception widely believed in Zimbabwe that anyone who gets a lumbar puncture has signed up for a death warrant. Later on after my own researches I found out that this procedure is used as a means to diagnose meningitis and if administered early can save lives.
I also then learnt that meningitis is the inflammation of the layers (meninges)that protect the brain and spinal cord. When a meningitis diagnosis was confirmed I was immediately put on amphotericin B, the only qualm I had with the Hospital personnel was that they kept missing my veins with their cannula which left my right arm resembling that of Popeye a famous 1929 cartoon character. Needless to say that to this day I now have a prickly fear of needles.
Eventually we struck a vein, and I was able to receive the treatment, a few bed sores and frail limbs later I was finally going home. As I type out my meningitis journey using my screen reader, almost a decade has since passed. I never take for granted that I am a meningitis survivor, and I was fortunate to be one of the few who got another chance at life…
In 2017 I later went for rehabilitation at the Dorothy Duncan Centre for the Blind, and today I serve as a Speaker and meningitis advocate, adding my voice to the fight to defeat meningitis...
As I left Harare Hospital on 23 December 2015, I knew that my life was never going to be the same after meningitis… I had lost my eyesight, but to this day I have never allowed myself to lose my sense of humour and resolve to keep moving forward in life.
***If you have read this far, Thank you and I hope it has been a source of comfort and a smile… Wherever you are in your life, whatever you have gone through or are going through, always remember to KEEP MOVING FORWARD.
TDM
Tendai David Muranganwa
October 2024