SURVIVING ECLAMPSIA

So…I’m back at it again. Writing that is. Three years later. Picking up right from where I left of because unlike many people, I take a while before I collect my broken pieces. That is just who I am.

I thought maybe this time round I should start by confronting my greatest fear. I walked right in to the valley of death and guess what…God saw it fit to give me another chance in life.

I am rewinding back to 2017. The darkest time of my life. Remember my battle with depression…that dark time that spiraled me down to the gutter? Well…I had phases to it. In my first phase, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to raise my baby so I thought it would be best to have him adopted. I did my research. I found a firm in Thika that deals with adoption processes. I took their number and promised to hold on to it until I was ready to make the call. I never did though. Majorly because I knew that once my baby was born, there was no way on earth that I would be able to give him up for adoption. So that was out of the question.

Then there was the second phase where I had managed to convince myself that once my baby was born, I would run away to a different country. I loved Rwanda and I always felt that if I were to start over in life, it will have to be Rwanda. I did my research. I knew how much it would cost to go to Rwanda from Kenya via road. So the major task that I had was to look for money to facilitate this “amazing” plan.

The last phase was the bleakest in the entire journey. For some reason, I always felt a dark cloud hovering over me. For some reason, I felt like this was it for me. This was basically my end. I would occasionally find myself making bye-bye comments. I remember one time telling my friend, if I die, I know my son will survive. I’d like my mom to be the one to stay with him because at least she would not have lost everything. After all, his father was at liberty to marry and have kids. As many as he would like. It is during this phase that I had my first encounter with eclampsia. I read about eclampsia from a blog. This disease stuck in my mind like a bad dream. I googled it. Researched it. Learnt about it and basically, I became an expert on it. Every day, I would tell my husband to read about it. I pestered him about it to the extent that it actually felt real. Like this is an eventuality that would make me a statistic. Of course he would hear none of it and most of the times, he thought it was the negativity talking.

For me, it was different. For the first time in my entire pregnancy journey, I felt peace. I was resolved to the fact that this is how it would end for me. I don’t know how or why, but I always felt and knew that my son would survive. My pregnancy was a text book pregnancy. I never had any major issues save for the dramatic welcome into the pregnancy journey in the first trimester. I never had morning sickness. No cravings. Normal blood pressure. Normal weight. No swelling. I mean the routine pre-natal checkups were just that for me. Routine.

Up until the 30^th week of my pregnancy, all was fine. Then one day, just a day before the August 2017 elections, I went to my clinic for the routine checkup. So…my blood pressure was high. Higher than normal. But because I had such a calm pregnancy, the nurse that attended to me didn’t think much of it. He advised that I should keep calm, avoid stress, drink a lot of water and tone down on manual work. He gave us his personal number and advised that we ensure that I have my blood pressure taken on a daily basis and send him the results so that he can decide on whether it would be necessary to put me on medication. That is exactly what we did. We went home that day and every day after that I would go to a local clinic, pay a fee of fifty shillings to have my blood pressure checked. Because I was too stubborn and hard headed, I would relay the information to my husband who would then call the nurse. There are days when the pressure reading would be completely normal. Other days it would be off the charts and on other days it would be lower than usual. At this time, my husband and I never even thought for a second of the gravity of this situation. My nurse thought that it was just the stress since we had mentioned that I had taken in a lot of stress and this being the last trimester, reality could have hit home harder than it should have.

All of a sudden, I started swelling. Other people would notice but I didn’t. I was in denial. I would go to bed at night and I would literally feel my heart beating outside my chest. There were several nights where I’d wake up abruptly from my sleep because my heart would be racing so fast that it became painful. My baby would sometimes be hyper active as if trying to tell me that he was in distress. Other times, he would be still and quiet as if trying to calm me down.

Being an amateur, I didn’t think much of all of it. Remember I knew so much about high blood pressure from my research concerning eclampsia but at that particular time, I was lost. Maybe a little confused but mostly scared. I knew for a fact that this was an onset of an extremely bad nightmare.

One day I woke up and I looked unrecognizable. I was puffy. My entire body was swollen. None of my shoes could fit me. I remember feeling nauseous and my vision would get blurry. We had to go to hospital. This felt completely out of control. The last words I told my husband before we left home,” I won’t come back home with you today. When and if I do, I want to find this house in the same condition I have left it today” (used to be a clean freak. that weekend, I had done lots of house cleaning).

He was worried. I could tell but true to my words. That was my last day home….

Yours Truly