An orthopaedic hospital is supposed to be a place where issues that have to do with bones, joints, muscles, ligaments and tendons are treated. But what happens to patients in some of such hospitals leaves much to be desired. JOSEPH AGUMAGU, reports

The day started well for 76-year-old grandmother, who identified herself simply as Ajoke. There was nothing to suggest something sinister was lurking in the dark for her. Her intuition was dulled by her excitement of that particular day. She had just finished worshipping her creator and was set to return home when the unexpected happened. She suddenly became dizzy, perhaps, due to exhaustion and fell down.

The fall, which affected her right ankle, landed Ajoke in her present ordeal. There was a ray of hope, however, when she was rushed to the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi, Lagos. But, shortly after, the hope melted into hopelessness. She had to spend six excruciating months in the hospital, in which three surgeries were performed on the bad leg.

They were badly done, making her optimism to wane, rather terribly. Feeling uncomfortable, she pressured to leave, which the doctors rejected. Eventually, she was discharged against the hospitals’ order.

She had vehemently objected to the option of amputation proposed to her by the doctors. By that time her right leg had taken a shape that frightened her. The children had become panicky because of the vicious bedsores on her buttocks and back that transmitted nerve-shattering pains she had to bear.

Fed up with this ugly development, her children forcibly secured her discharge from the hospital, and took her home to seek alternative treatment. The nurses employed to treat the bedsores succeeded ultimately and a physiotherapist visited to take over from there.

Ajoke revealed to Saturday Telegraph that seeing the condition of her right leg set off alarm bells of worry in her. She was greatly terrified at the thought of not being able to walk again.

She only found solace in the streams of tears for a couple of weeks. Her experience with the bedsores was one hell she wouldn’t wish for her enemy. However, with words of encouragement from her children and well-wishers, she held tenuously on the hope of getting a correctional surgery outside the shores of the country.

Aside from the funny shape her right leg had taken, her sheen that had inverted in the similitude of a c-shape, the agonizing pain her aged body was forced to bear was just unbearable for her. Her entire body was draped in constant pain, which painkillers could not kill in most cases.

But, to salvage the situation, the septuagenarian was flown to the United States of America where she spent two years in and out of the hospital, trying to get correctional surgery.

After several tests, the American doctors were alarmed at how crude and inexperienced the doctors that did the first surgery were. They, nonetheless, recommended another operation to reset the leg.

Her hope of walking again, was, however, extinguished when the American doctors announced to her and her family that the damage to her right leg was irreversible. This made her to cry like a baby.

At this time, millions of naira had gone down the drain. Projects that were supposed to be embarked upon by her children were abandoned and the money spent on her, sadly, without the expected positive results.

Ajoke said: “I cried and tears flowed like a river. It was as if my world had come to an abrupt end. My optimism crashed like a pack of cards when the news of my inability to walk again filtered through to me.

My family members spoke in hushed tones. I never envisaged such terrible end; it meant I was going to spend my remaining days on earth in excruciating pain and living on painkillers. I almost spiraled into depression.” After the efforts of the American doctors failed, her children decided to fly her back to Nigeria, to have a deserved “rest”. At home in Nigeria, she constantly covered the leg with fabric to conceal it from the prying eyes of visitors.

Even at that, subjecting any part of her body to any form of butchering, was the last thing imagined. To lose a body part willfully was a nightmare she could not summon enough courage to face.

She was content to go to the grave with her body parts intact. Ajoke came back fragile and her social life snatched away from her with no hope of her ever reclaiming it back.

She is now confined to the house even though she looks gracefully younger than her age. But she now depends on her housemaid and son for simple tasks to be carried out for her. A life she dreaded to settle for.

Ajoke’s son, Kenny, who took care of her for the six months she spent at ward B of the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi, said it was hectic running around to care for his mother. The stress, he added, was enormous.

He lamented the state of facility in the hospital, especially scarcity of vital machines that would have enhanced the treatment of patients in the facility. He said: “Do you know that there were only two Vac-machines in the entire hospital to take care of patients while we were there.

So, patients were compelled to queue behind these machines for treatment. No matter how severe your case was, you just had to wait.” He revealed that his mother had to wait for three weeks in her condition because the woman opposite her was on the same machine she was to use, and this, according to Kenny, caused her leg to relapse.

“The first time, my mum, used the Vac-machine for seven weeks. By the time she needed to use it again, it was not available, because a woman opposite her was on the same Vac-machine for three weeks.

What this means is that my mother had to wait for three weeks in her condition. When it was eventually made available to her, the wounds had relapsed. Instead of staying on the machine for just two weeks, she ended up spending 12 weeks on it with all expenses fully paid by us.” The hospital, according to Kenny, had to depend on Morison Industries Plc, which it partnered to supply Vac-machine for patients treatment at the rate of N35,000 per week.

“To use this machine alone for one week, cost us N35,000. Other miscellaneous expenses are not included in it. And my mother was placed on this machine for 12 weeks.” Renaeys Go Machine or Vac-machine, in a layman term, is simply the machine used to draw out fluid from a wound and allow increase of blood flow to the area. Vacuum-assisted closure of a wound is a type of therapy to help wounds heal more quickly.

As bad as Ajoke’s case seemed, hers, was not an isolated one. Peter Ariyo, who was retrenched from his company, had a similar story. He made efforts to secure a new job after his retrenchment without success. With his family’s economy nose-diving abysmally, a wife and a daughter to feed, he opted for driving commercial tricycle, popularly known as Keke Napep, for a living.

This new venture rekindled his hope for a better life. But not too long after, Ariyo’s life experienced a painful detour, when a car ran into him. He was standing beside his tricycle at Fagba in Lagos, at the time.

The accident, which shattered his dreams, left his ankle badly fractured. “My ankle bone came out, sending cold jitters down the spine of anyone who saw me,” he said. Seeing it was a serious case, Ariyo was quickly referred to the orthopedic hospital, Igbobi, for treatment.

This kicked off his journey into another round of pain. He told Saturday Telegraph that everything happened in a flash that day that he just couldn’t fathom it.

He was a healthy man who said a nice goodbye to his wife, little daughter, and neighbors in one moment and in another moment, they were battling to keep him alive. He was in a haze of confusion as to the sudden turn of event for him and his young family.

He said: “They rushed me to Igbobi same day after trying in vain to stitch my leg in a hospital at Balogun, Ishaga, Lagos. I was sent there because they felt my case could better be handled by the doctors in Igbobi.

Besides, I was looking really bad, for any private hospital around to want to admit me for treatment.” Meanwhile, the thought of going to Igbobi had brought a momentary relief to Ariyo and his wife, since it meant that he was being transferred to more experienced hands that seemed to have the Midas touch. In his gory state, he kept hope alive, not knowing that a rude shock was in store for him.

“The first two weeks at the orthopedic hospital was pure torture for me. I was always shouting because the pain was unbearable. It was two weeks of sleeplessness I had to endure. I was given an injection three times a day just to induce me to sleep. Yet the pain always resumed after a short break. (New Telegraph)