After three kidney transplants in 15 years, Lorna determined to make best of life

It’s Thursday morning in uptown Nairobi. The cold weather seems to be out to make a point: do not leave the house without warm clothing. Most people have heeded the call and are wearing thick jackets and scarves. But some walk the streets on their own terms, wearing what they chose.

At around 10.15 a.m. Lorna Irungu walks into a city restaurant. Dressed in a white T-shirt, blue jeans, black shoes and brown sunglasses. Despite the greyness outside, her world is full of sunshine and, as she says, the best she can do is bask in its glory.

Worst person

“I’d love to tell you that I am always this bubbly, but that would be a lie. Sometimes I’m the worst person to be around,” the 35-year-old says as she lets out a chuckle, sits down then lightly scratches her short, reddish, dyed hair.

From looking at her, it would be hard to tell that she has been floored by illness on several occasions. And after each punch, she has dusted off.
Going by a doctor’s prognosis, her family should be huddled somewhere trying to figure out what flowers to buy, what kind of music to play, what kind of farewell message to write on yet another card and ultimately whom to invite to her 13th memorial service.

“That was not in the grand scheme of things,” she says. “I am still here.”

After years of aches and pains and searching for the correct diagnosis from one doctor to another, she was finally diagnosed with lupus, a disease that affects the immune system.

Final curtain

Since then, her life has not returned to the original script. And in 2007 she thought the final curtain was about to fall. She was ready to succumb to what seemed to be her fate: an early death due to kidney failure.

“I no longer had the will to fight. I was scarred physically and mentally. Frankly, I’d had enough of life and all it had to offer,” she says. And just like that she was willing to throw away more than a decade of battle. Her time, she thought to herself, had come.

It all started with an infection that she hoped could be dealt with easily. But, as the year drew to a close, the infection evolved into something more serious – tuberculosis of the spine – earning her a stint at Nairobi Hospital.

She had hit rock bottom twice before, and on each of those occasions, she had been bailed out with some level of success. But this time round it felt different.

“I saw the outstretched hands of family and friends willing to pull me back up and set me on my feet again. But I did not care,” she says. At that point, she was falling freely into a dark abyss, and nothing, it seemed, would hold her back.

After her college education, Lorna, or Kui as she is fondly called by friends and family, had her own master plan in which everything was planned down to a T.

“I was to get my masters degree and maybe move to the US and start a life there in a house with a picket fence in a nice suburb. I seemed unstoppable,” she says.

And for a while she was, first as an actress with the legendary James Falkland’s Phoenix Players at the Professional Centre. Her acting led to the beginning of a career in television.

But then her kidneys put her on a journey she says she would not wish anyone to join.

“Some levels of pain are not meant for everyone,” she says.