MY STORY: A stroke will not hold me down

Rosebud Nyanchera, 25, suffered a polio-induced stroke at the tender age of five. It gave her disabilities but it has not sapped her spirit. PHOTO| PAULINE KAIRU

What you need to know:

  • Today, Nyanchera no longer uses mobility aids. “I just drag my right leg and get to where I need to go,” says Nyanchera.
  • Though she no longer has to have therapy, she still suffers backaches from walking long distances.
  • She has been able to regain her independence and can do most things fairly well, except where her career is concerned.
  • Attempts at a few vocations have hit a brick wall given her physical challenges.

Young people don’t typically suffer stroke, so when they do, and especially when they have to grow up with the physical impairments resulting from the disease, it can be particularly terrifying. Not so for Rosebud Nyanchera, a 25-year-old stroke survivor from Canaan, Kibera. She has learnt to take it all in her stride. It is only when she walks that one notices the unsystematic walk and the lunging of one hand. However a few minutes with her and one realises that she refuses to be defined by this point of view.

“It has been a rollercoaster of emotions and events for me and my family, but I have learnt to handle things as they come,” she says.

Nyanchera suffered her first stroke at the age of five. This was 1995, and it was rare for a child to catch such a disease. In Riokindo village, Kisii, where she lived, such were assumed to be the result of witchcraft, as was rumoured of her misfortune. 

The whispers were made worse by the fact that her entire family was at the hospital at the time, recuperating from a ‘strange disease’ that had swept through the homestead. “We’d all caught what presented like malaria but then at the hospital they said it wasn’t. All of us, except her (Nyanchera),” says her mother, Joyce Moraa.

Just as her two other children were recovering, news reached her that Nyanchera was unwell too.  “They said she suffered yellow diarrhea and had a bad fever. She was rushed to the hospital too. Things got worse at the hospital. At some point she fell unconscious. Doctors thought she was dying. Eventually, ‘water’ burst from the left side of her head,” Moraa says, explaining a palm-sized burn-like scar on Nyanchera’s left temple.   

“Then she started responding to treatment,” Moraa continues, but one month later her daughter was still in hospital, and she was concerned that Nyanchera still couldn’t sit up or even turn on her own. Nyanchera was transferred to Kenyatta National Hospital and the family moved to Nairobi where her father lived. 

At KNH, Nyanchera was told she had been infected with polio and was suffering post-polio stroke. She was started on the proper treatment in earnest, but the illness would leave her with paralysis and near-permanent impairment affecting the right side of the body. She would be immobile for most of her childhood.

Five years of physiotherapy at KNH and Mbagathi hospital, with the help of body braces, and her physical function slowly improved. It wasn’t easy though; she had to re-learn basic skills like walking, and using her left hand to eat, dress, bathe and do other activities many take for granted.

The treatment was expensive too. “My late husband, an employee of Tana & Athi Rivers Development Authority, had to occasionally take loans to cater for her treatment,” says Moraa.

Regular rehabilitation and a strict exercise regimen at home saw her get back on her feet and go to school, but, “many times we were called because she had fallen and couldn’t move, and we had to rush to take her to hospital.”

Nyanchera did not give up. After she completed her primary school, her parents moved her to Joytown Secondary for the Disabled in Thika so she could catch up with her therapy without which they it had seemed her condition was deteriorating.

Today, Nyanchera no longer uses mobility aids. “I just drag my right leg and get to where I need to go,” says Nyanchera. Though she no longer has to have therapy, she still suffers backaches from walking long distances.

She has been able to regain her independence and can do most things fairly well, except where her career is concerned. Attempts at a few vocations have hit a brick wall given her physical challenges. But her resilience knows no bounds.  “I’ve tried my hand at catering and secretarial and couldn’t do either,” she says. However, she says she has made peace with the failures. “Sometimes the disadvantage I have over others stares me in the face and I feel bad about it but I always find strength to move past such moments. I am not where I want to be in life, but I won’t stop trying.” Currently, she runs an M-pesa shop in Kibera.

“Recovery from stroke is a lifelong process,” Nyanchera says, “and I would like to tell any young people suffering from stroke that no matter where you are in life, there is hope. For parents with children with stroke or other disabilities, do not lock them up in the house. Let them thrive and explore their potential. It is tough, but it can be done.”