My husband nearly died last week, all because he was a Covidiot who joined naysayers in saying that Covid-19 vaccine is not necessary!
When the government announced in April or was it March that people should go for their jabs of AstraZenaca, I told my husband we should go get our jabs. He is in his late 60s and I am 10 years younger than him. He is also diabetic, has been since his late forties. For someone with an existing condition, I felt he would say, “Yes, let’s go immediately, instead, he said he didn’t want to be “used as a guinea pig!”
Every time I read articles on Covid-19, I would forward to him or read it out loud but no he refused completely…and he is a very educated man, o!
He would quote statistics;
“Do you know the vaccines are still being tested, I don’t want to be used as a guinea pig?”
“Do you know the vaccine can cause blood clot, who will take responsibility for that?”
“Let them be deceiving you there, once you sanitize, and keep your distance, it is like cold, flu, you will be fine!
“…In short, how many people have died on our street?”
Hummn. Coming from a man who is well travelled o, I left him to his beliefs.
Me, I went to get my jabs; the first and later the second…I just had to take it because, we are dealing with a virus that has killed so many worldwide; are world leaders and the medical sector lying that people are dying from corona virus?
I figured, even if one would die, let it not be because of foolish ideas that Coronavirus doesn’t truly exist.
Anyway, my husband was doing fine until after we attended a wedding last week.
Two days after he began to cough…you know that first clearing of throat and then it became something that kept him awake all night.
Kpaka, kpaka, kpaka all through the night keeping me awake as well.
We didn’t suspect anything, I just said, I would go buy him cough syrup the following day. But I made him steam in hot aboniki and gave him a ginger drink…which he always took even before now.
By the following morning, he was shivering, and running a high temperature, that was when I became worried.
I rubbed him again with aboniki; then made pepper soup, all the while thinking this was perhaps malaria on its way. My sister, I didn’t see what was coming at us, at all!
I went to the pharmacy to buy him malarial dugs and cough syrup…
By the time I came back, my husband was unrecognizable; he was beginning to gasp for breath and yet shooting high temperature, coughing and in obvious pain.
I removed his clothes and began to use a towel to mop his body in a bid to bring down his temperature while I asked my kids to help me get someone to carry their father into the car downstairs.
All this time, Covid-19 did not cross my mind even though I had read several pieces and watched so many videos on it.
Why, you ask?
Because even when we went to that wedding, we both wore our masks. We were careful not to shake hands and mingle with other people especially when it was time to go to the dancing floor. We sanitized after every handshake he had with friends and family at the wedding…
we obviously didn’t keep safe enough.
At the hospital, since they had his medical records, they told us they were mandated by government to carry out Covid tests on all patients regardless of their symptoms. I told them to carry on but even before the doctor came back with the nurse to do the test, my husband had slipped into a coma! He is diabetic, so it was a diabetic coma.
Even so, I was so scared!
I began to cry but I was told to go and wait at the reception while the doctors did their thing with him…a few hours later, they called me to come and carry my husband because he had tested positive to Covid-19…I just passed out!
When I came to, they asked me to call a relative to come and take my husband away from their hospital because if the government found out they had a Covid patient, their hospital would be shut down…by this time, they were already treating us like lepers!
They insisted I did a Covid test too, since they knew I had been with my husband all this while…thankfully, I tested negative. That was the beginning of our troubles.
The way they hurried us out of the hospital with my husband still in a coma was pathetic. They didn’t even listen to my plea, they said we were jeopardizing the lives of other patients, doctors and nurses…you know what’s worse? My husband was abandoned on the floor of that hospital, outside, o. while we frantically sourced for hospitals that would take him.
By “we,” I mean, my husband’s family and our friends and friends’ friends, who I called for help.
Private hospitals that took in Covid patients were full and isolation centres from Lasuth to Luth to the few hospitals on the island that took in Covid patients, all were also full…well, not so full but their asking price for taking in my husband was the reason we couldn’t go. They were asking for N3.million deposit! And no they didn’t want installment payment!
Finally, we got a “cheap” centre that would take us for as cheap as N2.7million…full payment or “don’t bother to come!”
We scrambled around for money…someone brought, N40k, another N200k, another N45k, another N1m…and of course I emptied both our accounts…
But before we could go to the hospital, we had to go hire an ambulance for N100,000K last price! But before we got the ambulance, nko?
Eventually, we got to the hospital and we found out that after paying the N2.7m deposit, we would also be required to pay daily fees of no less between N50-250k! This is besides drugs and protective gear for people who would be caring for him.
See what not taking a “cheap” vaccine has cost us?
That was when I called my husband’s siblings abroad, “Your brother is dying and in a coma, he has caught Corona and we need money o to save him.”
Thankfully, my husband is recuperating…
Now he told someone to tell me that once he gets out of isolation, he should go get the vaccine.
Aha! The person we have forewarned, lord give him ears to listen!
Look at all the trauma he put me through!
Please tell everyone to go and get vaccinated, the isolation centres are fast filling up and many more people are dying from this delta variant.
I repeat, “the person we have forewarned, lord has finally given him ears to listen!”
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)