Woman makes a Sh1,000 daily trip to hospital

Aisha Abdi* had never set foot in Nairobi for the 40 years of her life, and if not for being diagnosed with cervical cancer, she may never have left Isiolo County.

Not because she did not love to travel, but as a mother of eight, her children sought her attention with every turn she made.

Besides, the third wife, whose husband had retired from the public service, was running her small grocery shop to make ends meet.

Her life took a turn for the worse in 2014 when she got abdominal pains.

“It was like a never ending menstrual cycle with very painful cramps,” she recalls.

While she thought the blood flow and excruciating pains would naturally fade away, the agony just got worse by the day and eventually made her bedridden.

“You know, as a woman you are used to a few days of discomfort but when it’s persistent, then it triggers your sixth sense,” says Ms Abdi as she awaits her radiotherapy session at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH).

Ms Abdi says that her first trip to the county hospital was after a three-month battle with the pain.

“I decided to go to Isiolo County Hospital because I had become totally helpless. My eyes were so pale and the only things I saw were the four corners of my bedroom,” she says.

When she walked into the hospital, the only thing she remembers was the doctor’s advice that she urgently needed to have her womb removed “because something was growing inside it”.

When her womb was removed in January, medics advised her to go to KNH for radiotherapy sessions.

She did not travel immediately because the pain subsided for about four months.

When the pain started again, she raised money from relatives and travelled to Nairobi. 

One sunny morning in June, Ms Abdi and her husband took a bus to Nairobi.

Their first stop was the Kibera slums where her sister-in-law lives. 

DREADFUL EXPERIENCE

Since then, Ms Abdi and her husband have become additional family members in their sister-in-law’s house.

“We had no money to rent any room because we needed to save every penny for my treatment,” she says.

“The only person I knew in this big city was my husband’s sister-in-law, who I had never visited before,” she adds.

They stayed in Kibera for two months before she started treatment.

Ms Aida says she delayed because she had been told that she needed at least Sh10, 000 upfront before starting her radiotherapy sessions at KNH.

She would, however, later realise that a patient does not need to have the cumulative amount to start treatment as the hospital charges Sh500 per session.

On her first day at KNH early August, she was greeted with long queues of patients, who, just like her, were awaiting radiotherapy sessions.

When the Nation spoke to Ms Abdi last week, although frail and in pain, she had received seven sessions of radiotherapy.

“Every day, we part with between Sh600 and Sh1,000 to commute to and from Kibera, have my radiotherapy and eat. If you do not eat, the drugs will weigh you down,” she says.

She adds that despite living with a relative, she still has to chip in the house’s expenses because her sister-in-law does not have enough money to support the big family.

Usually, if a woman has Stage One cancer, surgeons will remove her womb (including the cervix), through hysterectomy as well as both ovaries and fallopian tubes at the same time, to prevent the spread of the cancerous cells.

“Illness is not a good thing. It drains you financially, physically and emotionally. When you are sick, you lose touch with reality,” this is Ms Abdi’s final statement as she walks into the hospital to receive her eighth radiotherapy session, with 18 more to go.