An ICU recovery patient. (Courtesy/gettyimages)

One of the success stories of an ICU admission is when an unconscious patient wakes up and makes a full recovery. That was the case of an unknown Caucasian male who ended up in the hospital, he was unconscious at admission and had severe head trauma.

He was brought to the hospital by the police, who had been called to the scene of a robbery in a Nairobi estate. Two apartments had been broken into, the first in block B where the hooded attackers left abruptly when one attacker was heard saying “mwenye nyumba hi si mzungu” (the home owner is not white).

The next attack was in block E which was the target, luckily an alarm had been raised for the earlier attack, so the armed goons left hurriedly and the victim was rescued and transferred to hospital quickly. A month later the unknown man started communicating, it was mainly by one-word scribbled writing and largely to express his discomforts and needs.

He was moved from the intensive care unit to the high dependency unit and as we were preparing to discharge him to the normal wards, word came round that we needed to arrange a transfer to a private hospital as a relative had come forward.

The relative was his wife, Mrs Wood, who recently returned from China, they were in a business together and she was away on a shopping trip when the attack occurred

She came to arrange the transfer and turns out she was a much younger African lady who introduced herself as Njeri. They had been together for five years when Mr Wood moved to Kenya after a divorce from his first wife.

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He admired her determination to get her son doing well with his communication. Soon he was giving therapy to her son in a house they shared, he also helped her open a shop in one of the malls near the house.

He was able to sponsor her to shop directly from China which saw her business quickly grow.

Eventually Mr Wood was released from hospital to his wife for home care as he continued to heal, we noted that his vision had suffered some damage.

Three weeks later Mr Wood was brought to the accident and emergency unit by the police in poor general condition. He was admitted into the high dependency unit and guarded. He was rather drowsy but that cleared after a few days in the unit.

We noticed that his wife did not visit. The police explained to us that the robbery that had happened a few months earlier was investigated. It turns out his wife had hired someone to kill him, luckily the attempt failed.

Someone in the estate recognized one of the men at the first foiled robbery as a man she had seen Njeri with. An arrest and confession soon followed. It was thought the motive for the killing was an insurance that Mr Wood had taken out for ten million Kenya shillings, it was an education policy for a son he loved as his own.

When it was time for discharge, Mr Wood was moved by his embassy to an undisclosed location as he awaited repatriation. His sister was coming for him. During one of my house calls he gave me a note to hand deliver to Njeri.

It was obvious he did not believe that she was responsible for the attack and really wanted to see her before he left the country. They never met. Soon his sister arrived and accompanied him back home. Did his attackers and Njeri face the law? That is not clear, however at my last communication with Mr Wood it was good news, he recently met and fell in love with somebody else in his home country and has managed to put that terrible experience behind him.

More good news, he is going to be a father again. He requested I help him get in contact with Njeri as he needed to serve her divorce papers and maybe get some refund on his investment. I declined to help and hope he can abandon that mission.

 - An anaesthetist and palliative care doctor, specialising in total pain management, tells of her experiences with patients and their families.