After suffering severe spinal cord injury in an automobile mishap, Dr. Stella C. Iwuagwu, has devoted her life to pursuing her goal of being a voice of the voiceless. Currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Health Sciences, Cleveland State University, Cleveland Ohio, she was recently on the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme to work with Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State, She speaks with Assistant Editor, Joke Kujenya and Blessing Olisa, on how lonely and frustrating it is coping with a life-changing spinal cord injury, being dependent on others, among others.
ALTHOUGH Stella Iwuagwu has been through experiences that warrant defeat, she continues to push through the obstacles in her life. Sleepless nights were a frustration for her son and daughter as they had to wake to turn her frequently to prevent pressure sores. As she narrated her story from the benefit of hindsight, she bemoaned, “you never can imagine how on the physical side, you, a once agile, go-getter, now has to daily depend on other people to do most of your life activities.”
Starting from the end of the beginning, she said “Things that used to be so easy now became huge challenges, if not impossible to do them on my own. I had to think twice before I could venture to do anything. Things, walking and even getting up from my wheel chair seat, now take longer, despite having a team that help me. Many times, I have to surmount frustration while striving to get my ‘old life’ back, especially, when one once had a very promising life and now, one is close to being a vegetate. It was that bad”, she emphasised.
The lady, now in her forties, was lively until an accident that left her paralyzed from the chest down after crushing her C1 and C2 vertebrae and was given a ventilator to breathe. She said “It was in 2007, I was travelling to Kano from Abuja. When we got to Zaria, our vehicle suddenly went out of control and we skidded. I don’t know exactly what the problem was. But it went out of control and we glided into a ravine close by. I knew I was unconscious for a while. After a while, I regained consciousness and saw that some people have already brought a Danfo bus, moved my driver into the bus and were trying to move me when I opened my eyes.”
Asked if her driver was dead, she said “No, but he was slightly injured. Then, they tried to pull me out of the gully. But I was in so much pain. I was bleeding and my head was all thumping. But after they gently pulled me out, I realised I had so much pain at my back and somehow knew my spine was broken.” Recalling the number of people in the vehicle, she said “It was just me and the driver in my Toyota Camry. We had travelled all the way from Lagos to Abuja. But I needed to get to Kano from Abuja. The accident happened around Zaria, about two hours into our trip. I think the time was around 7pm because it was getting a little bit dark…that was all I could recall at that point.
Hospital in Kano
“COPING with excruciating pains can be extremely overwhelming even if it lasts a few minutes”, Iwuagwu intoned with a ting of tears in her eyes. “I was told they moved me to Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Hospital, which was about five minutes’ drive from the accident point. But we could not be taken in because doctors were on strike at that time in 2007. So, we were moved to a maternity home. But all they could do was to stop my bleeding and administer some pain relief measures. One of the good Samaritans that stayed with us told me they said that an ambulance came the next day to move me to the National Hospital, Abuja. Believe me, at this point, I was numb and half gone. I didn’t know much of what was happening to me again. The task that took me to Kano automatically aborted.”
At Abuja National Hospital (ANH)
BLINKING off the tears forming in her eyes, Iwuagwu said “This is not about feeling sorry for myself. It is really about moving forward and making each day count. But it is also about wishing someone who has the power to do so will help correct the anomalies that got me to the point of living off others today. I recalled vividly that when we got to the ANH very early the next morning, I was taken straight into the emergency room and seen by a medical officer who immediately put a collar on my neck. Even though I was screaming that my back was broken, they just lifting me from one stretcher to another. Yet, with the little energy I could muster, I tried hard to make them realise the greater injury was on my back, not the neck. But they just continued what they were doing without regard to my cries. With the collar fixed, the official asked them to move me to the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and X-ray. So, the official there did all sorts, checked the spinal cord and the nerves. Later, I found he only wrote about my head and neck ignoring any mention about my spine or lower back despite the fact that I kept weeping and in tears shouting my back was badly broken and hurting. So, that was how they did not diagnose my back injury that night.
“The next day, they removed the collar because they discovered I didn’t have a neck injury. But they sent an orderly to move me to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). By that next day, my voice had gotten weak. But the fear I was having persisted because the pain on my back had gotten to the dying point. It was much more unbearable. I didn’t know if there was no communication between the entire hospital and the ICU. It seemed as if I just showed up and didn’t fit into their systems. I just can’t understand it all. Then, some nurses showed up and started asking ‘what is this’?; ‘who brought this patient here’? ‘We don’t have any space, we are just coming back’. And that was how they went back and forth. I just felt abandoned. I felt like shouting to tell them that I am also a trained nurse at the university. But it was only the little voice in me that was talking. I was now too weak to be heard. But I heard them so clearly well. And I wept bitterly.
“Shortly after, they grudgingly admitted me into the ICU and I was promptly ignored. It was so bad that for three days, no one came into the room where I was or dare even asked me if I was hungry enough to be given any food. And for them to even give you a bedpan to pee, they had to lift me up. And for me with a broken back, you can imagine how crushing that would be. Again, nobody indicated that I had a broken back. So, they expected me to be grateful in the least that an hospital official, not a nurse or medical personnel, is even helping me with a bedpan. By that third day, a Consultant came and he asked me to lift my leg. And by this time, I only had tingling sensation on my leg and I was losing feelings progressively. I told him, sorry sir, I can’t lift my leg, they are dead. He looked at me surprisingly, and promptly asked for the MRI which was given to him. When he saw the result about my head and neck; he asked, where is the result of the check on this woman’s spine? They told him they didn’t take that. And he asked them angrily, why not? This is an accident victim. You should have taken that automatically. They had no answer. The man was furious. He then ordered MRI of my spine. And I started crying for the fear of being moved because my body was in pains and dying at the same time.
“And well, you might want to say, thank God the man came. But it didn’t do me any good because by then, I could no longer lift my legs. The damage had already been done. I know if they had identified I had a spinal cord injury at the time I was brought in the next day from Kano, it could have saved me because there are certain measures they could have taken to avert the trauma I am currently in. In any case, even after they had ascertained that it was spinal cord injury, they told me they could only do ‘conservatory treatment’, meaning, they can only just wrap me in POP which I truly don’t know what help that could offer me. Eventually, another consultant was brought in because they didn’t have a nuero-surgeon and they requested for one from the Usman Dan Fodio (UDF) University Hospital to come to the ANH to help me. He then read the MRI and told me apologetically that apparently, they knew what to do but lacked the equipments to handle my case. I just laid there, crying.
“It was on the fifth day that those I call ‘angels of mercy’, who had by the been searching for my whereabouts, Dr Mike Egbu, Dr Gaga, formerly of the Ford Foundation and Ms. Katheline Perry, formerly on US National Institute of Health (NIH), Nigeria, who was once my Director of Nursing Service when I worked as a nurse at the First Consultant, knew where I was. They didn’t ask me questions. They just came together, made enquiries at the ANH and told me that they had found a specialist hospital in Ghana where I could be taken for my legs’ surgery so it can be restored as much as possible. And believe me, I didn’t even know how my hospital bills were offset. It was much later I was told how they pulled resources together to settle all my bills including the N60,000 that was paid for the MRI. That’s all I could say on that.”
Moving to Ghana
NOTING that it was hard for her to describe her restless nights due to chronic back pain, Iwuagwu continued, “at the point I was to be moved to the Foundation for Complex and Orthopaedic Surgeries’ (FCOS) in Ghana, I was told one ANH doctor and a nurse were assigned to travel with me. Despite that, they had difficulty assigning an ambulance to move me to the Abuja airport. So, when Dr. Mike Egbu saw their reluctance of the ambulance driver, he shouted on him that if he refused to drive, he, Dr. Egbu, would drive it. So, it was a whole saga at the ANH. Eventually, we got to the airport, then, another problem arose. The doctor to go with me was nowhere to be found. When we expected him at the hospital, we thought he had plans to meet us at the airport. My suspicion was that they were afraid of their ANF, Chief Medical Director (CMD), because throughout the period of my stay at the hospital, he was at loggerheads with those that came to cater for me. It was even a hurdle for him to give me a referral letter on the hospital’s letterhead with his signature. He came one of the days and said with sarcasm, who is this Stella especially when he saw Dr. Egbu advocating for me. In fact, so many calls within and outside were made until one big shot spoke with him to give me the letter. So, the whole thing got the CMD repulsed at me. Dr Perry jumped into the plane as the second nurse. I remember I laid flat on my back because by the time I left the ANH, I have gotten paralysed up to my chest. Worse still, I could not even fathom the level of my injury at that time. So, I was gripped with terrifying fear because I don’t know how further worse it would become. I almost stopped breathing at some point because I had lost sensation. I couldn’t do anything for myself, lost my legs, and not able to feel my muscles again. I could only hear, and that, even faintly. So, they had really rush things by now and carry me completely. My talking had become so slow and hushed. But the point was, I could not advocate for myself. All I could do then was that at a time I was unable to find my voice; there were voices helping to fight my battle. And that brings tears of thankfulness to my eyes because I was not abandoned.
“Our flight to Ghana was about two hours or so. And what made it prolonged was that somewhere along the line, it was like landing permission was not secured. So, we could not land for some time, hovering in the air, until we got the consent to land. However, by the time we disembarked the aircraft, surgeons with an ambulance were on ground to receive and whisk me away promptly to the theatre. And they would have done the surgery right away. But because it was a Sunday and due to all the delays we experienced, they did it first thing the next day, Monday. By the time they were through, they had fixed a metal on my back to support the bone and then, they did trans-section of the Laminectomy. Well, I wasn’t conscious of all they did. But the medical experts explained everything to me in details later. The doctor that started the whole process in Ghana at Kolebu Teaching Hospital, Dr. Hoanabe Boachi, is a special orthopaedic surgeon in New York, USA. He is the one that initiated that programme at the centre I was taken to. He then taught other surgeons in complex neuro and orthopaedic surgeries. They had a team assigned to ensure that all I needed were catered for.
“Temporarily however, the pains I used to feel were all gone. But by the fifth day or so, I started experiencing another bout of crushing pains on back. It was so bad I suffered insomnia. And the surgeons came back, quite shocked and surprised to meet me in hot tears, crying and groaning. They ran series of tests and examinations again. When they poked any part of my body, I will yell in a shrilling way. They were not expecting me to have any pains other than usual humane feelings. And that was the beginning of my healing. Even though I was able to feel pains on my back, I still couldn’t lift any part of my body. They administered more treatments, told me that they had done the best surgery that can ever be prescribed for someone in my situation in any part of the world. Two weeks after, they had to discharge me for onward recuperation, continued therapy and rehabilitation in the United States of America (USA)…
Recovering in USA
According to medical reports, a person with spinal degeneration often experiences stiffness in the back. In Iwuagwu’s case, Ghanaian surgeons had begun the healing process by trying to get her out of bed, to sit up and handled her like a little baby. She said “Even when they got me up, I would simply collapse back. People had to hold me on both sides. I had my younger sister and a personal nurse that flew with me at the hospital. And that made things a lot easier. Now, during the period of pains, I never knew I was easing out wastes. But after the surgery, I felt pressed to ease and realised I couldn’t push it out. And a nurse had to do it for me. She had to put her hand into my bowels to draw it out. It was all so awful. I felt for her but she seemed unperturbed. They put me on a daily and timed routine bowel programming. But I could only feel pains on my back.
“And that pains hasn’t gone away till today. Indeed, the doctors told me the pains will live with me for life. They call it neurogenic pains because my nerves are continuously firing with nothing to control them. According to them, it is all part of the nerve damage. So, the movement to USA was the next best thing for me because my two children, daughter, 21, and son, were there. Plus, they felt I would get better handling there especially as my surgery was monitored by a US-based doctor. When the pains was increasing after some time, they did another surgery on my back again. And they gave me a Spinal Stimulator by inserting some electrodes, electronic gadgets that would intercept the firing nerves only to reduce the pains. So it acts like little tingling on my back and that takes over the pains. And this helps but doesn’t take away the pains totally.”
Back to school on a wheel chair
Having a back surgery can be a tough choice. On average, people consider this only after all other treatments have failed to provide relief. “It was a choice I could not even make but others made for me. And it taught me that you don’t know what you have until you lose it. But what kept me going was the fact that I am alive. And it is even a big miracle for me to retain the little functions that I still have. So, I am rejoicing in God for the things that I can do, one of which is to return to college to complete my PhD programme.
“My life was like a whole reversal, I became the baby while my children became my parents. They made sure I ate, pooped and I was well kept. In the middle of the night, I call on them when I needed anything. But amid that, we had so much humour to keep me going and which we also used as therapy for all of us. It wasn’t until my daughter did essay for her college when she revealed that she cries only when she gardens that I knew she ever wept over our situation. She cried because my voice that used to prompt them to let us go garden was not being heard no more. She was now the one calling on her brother. So, the garden became her space to express herself to mother nature.
“And so, here I am confined to a wheel chair, my CRH project in Nigeria, running well under my younger sister’s care, who took on the vision and ran with it, it now has projects across 13 states in the country. But for years, my financial life grounded. But suffice to say that all I have needed, the Lord has provided. Prior to the accident, I was at the Southern Illinois University. Then, I had less than six months to be through with school and hoped to graduate by the end of that year 2007. When the accident happened, my immediate goal was survival. And rather than just trying to walk and seeking healthcare, I felt the need to go and complete my PhD. Yet, I had to register for 16 credit hours and research hours that I didn’t need. I also had to be a full student to benefit the health care benefits. Somehow, I was able to get the Walker Residential Fellowship for three times, which ordinarily, was often won just once. And that helped in paying for my school fees. I also had my medical therapy paid for by the university. With a number of research to conduct by a woman that could barely sit up, I had a formidable duty. However, with the support of God, families in and out of the USA, wonderful friends and colleagues, I did my programme, got my PhD and eventually won the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme that brought me to Nigeria, years after my tribulations”.
