Poetic justice meted out to young dad

Dr Waiganjo’s phone call requesting me to help him out with a simple cut on the leg of an eight-year-old boy initially surprised me. But, as he gave me more details, his justification to call me out on a case which superficially looked so simple became clearer.

“I would like you to please come and see Steve who has been brought from school with a cut on his leg.” As I listened to Dr Waiganjo, I looked at my watch. It was four in the afternoon. “Apparently he was playing on the games pitch, fell on a sharp stone and sustained a cut on his leg.”

“Have you stitched the wound?” I asked.

Tetanus jab

‘‘Yes, I have,” replied the doctor. “I also gave him an anti-tetanus injection and prescribed some painkillers and antibiotics.

While the mother, who rushed here after being informed by the school, was waiting at the pharmacy to collect the medicines, she noticed that the wound which I had stitched was bleeding alarmingly.

Also the site where I had given him the tetanus jab was bleeding.” The alarm bells, which must have rung in Dr Waiganjo’s mind, now chimed louder in mine.

“I see what you mean,” I said. “Please put a pressure dressing on both wounds, send his blood for coagulation profile and I am coming.”

When I entered the Accident and Emergency Department, I was quickly joined by Dr Waiganjo and the Sister, who escorted me to the cubicle where the little boy was lying on a couch. The large padded dressing which had been applied on the cut leg was soaked with blood. The smaller dressing on the arm where the anti-tetanus injection had been given looked spotted too.

Sister gently took the dressing off for us to see the state of the wounds. Both wounds were bleeding furiously. More worrisome was the observation that there was no evidence of clotting of blood, nature’s device to stop bleeding.

“Haemophilia!” I uttered the name of the cursed disease with my heart in my throat. Dr Waiganjo nodded with a forlorn expression of hopelessness on his face.

“Blood reports back yet?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Sister replied.

“We better get some more history out of the parents,” I said.

Soon a young couple was ushered into the Sister’s office where I sat waiting for them. I introduced myself and, in return, they did the same. “I am Doris, Steve’s mother, and this is my husband Roger.”

“I need to ask you some questions,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

‘‘Like what?” Roger sounded anxiously impatient.

“Like have you noticed Steve getting easily bruised or developing bumps on his arms and legs with minor injuries?”