Episode 1[/b]

...It was around 10:00AM when I was leaving the opd (the outpatient department) after the brief altercation with the patients appointments booking man and headed towards the KNH KBS station. I took a KBS and alighted at the ambassadaur hotel, crossed over to Kencom where there used to be alot of telephone boothes.
It was very hot and I could feel that for every step i made my body was weakening at a rate never felt before.
I called my friend on her land line (there were no mobile phones then, and whoever had them, they were buying them at close to kshs 500,000 per hand set). Luckily enough, I managed to get the friend and I explained to her my situation. We agreed that she meet me at the kencom bus station inside the sitting area. Half an hour later she found me dozing at the seat. She immediately called her orthopaedic surgeon brother who agreed to see me in KNH. We got inside the KBS and off we went to KNH. We went straight to the room where the surgeon was stationed when he was being consulted in KNH. The lady friend at this juncture had to leave, but I instructed her to call my guardian whom I was staying with in dandora. It was around 1.30PM.
The surgeon examined me and and recommended that I be admitted immediately. I was sent to casualty to begin the process of admission. I was further examined by the doctor on duty after waiting for close to 3 hours. This is when the doctor dropped the atom bomb...that i was suffering from one of the 260 known kidney diseases and i had to be examined further through lab tests in order to know exactly which one to treat...I started making some calculations in my head, really weird calculations...if it took say 4 days for one test to be done and results released, then for 260 tests it would take 1040 days and that is almost 3 years. I was figuring here that I would be dead before they were able to determine which disease they would be treating! But that was the least of my concerns at the time.
A renal ultra sound was recommended but the doctor informed me that the institutes only machine had packed up and as such I would have to have it done in town. Next he wanted a complete haemogram (blood tests) done. Also a complete urinalysis tests were required. I just asked the doctor if he really expected me to do all that in my situation noting that even walking was a problem. He suggested that he would admit me, but before I was put onto any treatment, all those tests would have to be done.
It was around 7:00PM and my guardian had just arrived from work. The consultant gave us the lab requisitions and he told us that the haemogram and urinalysis could be undertaken in KNH labs, he directed us where to go, in addition to telling me to report to ward no. 46 after these tests.
We went to the main lab and gave out the requisitions only to be told that there were no reagents. There were 3 men in that lab. It was getting to around 9:00PM and as we sat on one of the benches along the corridor near the lab wondering what to do next, we saw one of the men who was in that lab. He was coming towards us. We stopped him and literally begged him to help us...his suggestion, toeni kitu! We parted with some money and at around midnight the haemogram and urinalysis tests samples were collected and we were adviced to pick them in the morning the following day.
After the lab, we went to ward no 46 on the 7th floor of the main block. Just before we entered the main door we could see that there was a lot of activities along the ward corridor. once inside I almost fainted on seeing the number of people who had been admitted that night...it was well over 50. At the nurse call desk, I was informed that my file had not been brought from casualty, so I was told to wait. All the benches and seats in the ward were all occupied by patients who were waiting to be assigned a space to sleep. We went down to the opd where there is quite a lot of seats and sat there for the rest of the early morning till around 5:00AM in the morning. I did not sleep and neither my guardian. We went back to the ward where my guardian left me to go and prepare to report to work.
At around 7:00AM in the morning I was assigned a space where I was going to be receiving my treatment from...the beds were full to capacity, each 3ft by 6 ft bed being shared by 4 patients. The spaces between the beds where matrices had been laid on the floor were also full (each matrice had 4 patients), but luckily enough I got a space in one of the matrices on the floor. One patient did not make it to the morning and I doubt if the other 3 patients knew that one of them had died. That is how the space became available. As I sat on that floor matrice feeling exhausted and worse off than I was the previous day, I just looked at the the three half dead patients whom I was to share the matrice with and I could not help imagining that I had voluntarily prepared my path to the KNH morgue! I walked to the window and looked at the ground below, the industrial area and Nairobi National Nark and asked myself, "Hey kaigangio, which is better, home or here?". The answer came after three months!!
Thats it folks...episode 2 to follow.