A New Lease Of Life

Image is mine

There is a popular narrative in my country about the genotype AA. This narrative is that while they can marry anyone, as genotype is not a barrier, the malaria parasite becomes a challenge as they are usually worse hit with its attack.

I am AA, and for the greater part of my life, I was in and out of the hospital. In fact, I was this close to starting to use an inhaler on one of my hospital admissions, but I put up a good fight to not accept it as part of my prescriptions when I was being discharged.

The thing is, it wasn't just malaria fever with my health challenges, but whenever the weather gets cold, maybe due to rain or harmattan, it is me having difficulty breathing.

Not just that, but if I inhale the slightest smoke, my airway is already being constricted, and I am running to my bag of medications to take some meds. Sometimes, the medicines do not even work, and the next place that I am seeing myself is the four walls of the hospital.

This was the type of life that I lived till 2017, when my health issues got worse and I had my breakthrough. During that period of constant relapse in my health, I kept on running a series of medical tests to ascertain what the issue might be.

But every time the result came out, no cause was identified. At a point, I gave up on the doctors and just went back to my lodge to take my chances with whatever was to come.

Later on, my friends started speculating, what if my health problem was spiritual? They started suggesting that I visit churches that do healing, and maybe I could get my health issues sorted out.

Some even suggested maybe the religion that I belong to was responsible for my predicament, as they might be after my life for ritual purposes. There was no negative remark that I didn't hear against my faith, but I remained unshaken and told them off.

Then the worst happened: I became too weak to carry on with the national assignment, so I was relieved to go back home to my parents for proper care and treatment.

On getting home, I continued my treatment privately with my father's friend, who is a doctor. Since there was no cause of illness in the various test results, he treated me based on my symptoms, and boy, did my health deteriorate drastically.

While I held on to the little strength that I had left, I felt the need to go to a nearby laboratory for one last test of malaria and typhoid, and if nothing is still diagnosed, then I'll accept my fate as the end of the road.

I got to the lab and had the test done. When the result was out, I saw that an extra test for my PCV level was done too, and from the result, it showed that I had traces of malaria and that my PCV level was low.

For the first time in a long while, the root cause of my health issue was identified. I was placed on a blood supplement, which I took for just two days, and I felt so alive.

These experiences became an eye-opener for me, and honestly, I did lose faith in medicine. I mean all the hospitals visited and the wrong medications just compounded issues.

Whereas, all I needed was a blood booster, and I started to wonder, instead of continuing with the medications of blood supplements, why don’t I just eat healthy? Because truthfully I was a heavy junk eater and barely got the needed nutrients from there.

So I researched the basic nutrients that I need and then the things I needed to stay away from based on my health challenges.

It was during this time that I saw I needed to protect myself from the cold. You see, I was someone who couldn’t do without cold liquid and this aggravated my breathing problem.

I take delight in chewing ice blocks, and when I get warned, my excuse would always be that I’m young and I would stop my bad habits when I get older.

Unfortunately, my body didn’t hold up that long, as I quit my bad habits while still in my early 20s.

Although my life as a foodie is not as exciting as it used to be, I’m healthier. I know my body, and I haven’t had any major health issues in almost a decade.