My battle for life: Journalist's 335 days battle with cancer

Journalist Stephen Muiruri with his mother Mary Muchiri during a thanksgiving service at his ancestral home at Karenge Village, Kiambu County, in April 2010. [File, Standard]

Frail and emaciated, I walked unsteadily like a drunkard into the oncologist’s office at Nairobi’s MP Shah Hospital.

Behind a mahogany desk sat a middle height and stout man with a warm smile. A friendly man, he could afford a smile. I couldn’t return his smile because my mouth was badly bruised. My whole body was blazing with pain.

Dr Paresh Dave, a soft-spoken man, and God were the magical magnet that had been holding my life from sliding into the dark chambers of death in the past five months.

In his characteristic style, the doctor flashed his trademark warm smile as he extended his hairy hand for greetings.

In a slow motion, I dragged my hand and shook his. I then slammed into one of the two seats the doctor had reserved for his visitors, mostly patients on the verge of death. Although I had shed off a lot of weight, it felt like I was carrying bars of lead metal. -In one of our past conversations, Dr Dave had told me the first thing he did on arriving at his office was committing the work of his hands and his patients to the Lord.

Chilling nightmare

Sadly, in God’s own wisdom, some of his patients, whom I used to bump into at the reception bay, would vanish suddenly. I would later get a nerve-wracking revelation from one of his staff that the missing patients had succumbed to the deadly cancer.

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It was a chilling nightmare waking up every morning in a period of six months – when the chemotherapy treatment lasted - with the disturbing thoughts that you could be the next corpse being wheeled to the mortuary, just yards away from Dr Dave’s office!

Buried in deep thoughts, I worried whether the powerful killer chemo doses, which my syringe-wielding guardian angel had been administering since January 2009 would eventually extinguish cancer cells or end my life before I could hit the magical age of 40. I was slight over 38 years.

I had no answer to these troublesome questions. Although Dr Dave was seated an arm-stretch from me, I found myself drifting into a lonely world; buried in heavy silence. I was in great mental anguish and confusion. “Stephen, you have walked a long journey,” I heard Dr Dave mumbling, jerking my mind from the fantasy world. “We’re now in the final chemo dose and the most delicate stage,” he added.

On this day - June 27, 2009 – I had come for my sixth chemotherapy dose. I had survived death by a whisker during the second and fifth doses – administered in March and May 2009.

My body and health had taken a heavy toll from high-dose chemotherapy drugs.

Side effects

The powerful drugs are meant to destroy fast-growing cancer cells. But in the process, they kill even healthy cells. They don’t know to differentiate the good and the bad cells.

As a result, the aggressive therapy triggers side effects, which come with a killer punch. For months, I had been nursing life-sucking infections and a heavily weakened immune system.

And that’s not all. I was experiencing bruised gums and rectum, decreased urination, swelling of the hands and feet, fatigue; headache, high blood pressure, nausea, uncontrolled vomiting, loss of hair on the scalp and other parts of the body, constipation, loss of appetite and blackening of finger and toenails.

Dr Paresh Dave, an oncologist (standing), who administered chemotherapy treatment on journalist Stephen Muiruri (seated next to him), during a thanksgiving service. [Courtesy]

I was also suffering from memory loss. I couldn’t tell my telephone number off-head, yet I knew it so well before I embarked on this torturous journey – yet the only surest way to save my life. Names of most people and past events had also vanished from my memory.

It might sound comical but I would sometimes open my eyes at night and lift my hand to reconfirm that I was still alive, not dead! It is awkward living half-dead.

I struggled to carry my body, which was heavily emaciated by the powerful chemo drugs.

“I’m mentally set for the last dose,” I told Dr Dave, almost in a whisper due to painful mouth sores. “No matter the madness it brings, I’ll persevere,” I added. Dr Dave explained he would give me a lower dose since the fifth one almost dispatched me to the grave. Some patients brave the painful journey only to die on the last chemotherapy. “I can’t give up when doing the final bend to win the race,” I told the doctor.

A tumour, which was lodged in my throat from mid August 2008 threatening to choke me to death as it elongated, was the destiny that connected me to this incredible stranger.Despite the grim and grave situation I was in, I told myself this was a battle I was determined to win at all cost in the best interest of my son, Kerry Muchiri.

I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a type of cancer that begins in the lymphatic system; which is part of the body’s germ-fighting immune system, by Dr Ranjana J. Sonigra. Dr Sonigra is an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist, as well as a head and neck consultant surgeon.

Life turned upside down

After physical, X-ray and biopsy examinations, she discovered I had a tumour that had eaten three-quarters of my throat. She told me I had less than one month to live if urgent medical measures wasn’t taken.

The mass in my throat had turned my life upside down. I had lost speech. I ate little due to a razor-sharp pain when swallowing food, liquids or saliva. And my trousers had started falling off.

After the tissues from the tumour were analysed at the Aga Khan Hospital’s laboratory, Dr Sonigra telephoned me and requested that I see her at her clinic. That night, for the first time in my life, I said a prayer for myself, hoping for good results.

I visited her clinic at Nairobi Women’s Hospital on January 28, 2009. Although wearing a forlorn face like a judge reading a death sentence in a courtroom, Dr Sonigra in a motherly tone, delivered the devastating news I had dreaded to hear.

She explained that I had Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a type of cancer that begins in the lymphatic system, which is part of the body’s germ-fighting immunity mechanism.

I was thunderstruck, heartbroken, and numb. My life had suddenly taken a dramatic turn just a day after my son had celebrated his sixth birthday, on January 27, 2009. He had joined Class One earlier that month.

I never disclosed to any of the two doctors that the cancer had struck when I was nursing fresh and painful wounds of betrayal and a broken marriage. I was also in a deep financial hole.