Sheldon was barely nine months old when he fell on his head from the hands of his nanny, resulting in a severe skull deformity that would forever shape his life.
He didn’t cry. Neither did the nanny panic or tell his mother of the accident. She must have been a nanny from hell, for she quickly resuscitated Sheldon and moved on with life as if nothing had ever happened.
In the evening, his mother, Jasmine came in from a busy day at work, and noticed some redness on Sheldon’s forehead. She asked about the injury, but the mischievous nanny dismissed it as a slight knock against furniture as Sheldon was attempting to stand on his own.
Just before his father, Misheck arrived that night, Sheldon slipped into unconsciousness. His mother was dazed and in alarm phoned her sister to ask if it’s normal for nine-month old infants to zone in and out of life.
While on that call, Misheck walked into a frenzy in the house. The nanny busied herself in the kitchen evading the possible question of whether Sheldon had been unconscious earlier in the day, because of the injury.
Quickly, the three adults and Sheldon jumped into a neighbor’s car and rushed to a nearby mission hospital, ran by Catholic Sisters. Fortunately, his pulse could be felt but CT scans showed severe brain damage. Doctor’s referred him to another medical facility for better imaging with MRI.
Detailed diagnostic images showed internal bleeding and bruised brain tissue, besides intracranial pressure emanating from accumulated fluids.
Misheck and Jasmine were first time parents. Sheldon was born a year after they started living together. Nothing in their youth or courtship had prepared for that night.
It was their dream that Sheldon who was named after Misheck’s grandfather would become an entrepreneur who will run the family business that spanned 25 years.
With such a serious head injury, his future looked bleak by all means. He suffered frequent muscle spasms, concussions, seizures and blood clots on his brain. He was in a semi-vegetative state. A lifetime confinement to total dependence on his caregivers.
The nanny from hell vanished from their lives, just like she came. That night as Jasmine and Misheck rushed Sheldon between hospitals, she disappeared and was never traced .
This marked the beginning of a long and torturous journey of nursing and raising a child with multiple disabilities.
Although he was successfully resuscitated back to life and further bleeding and brain damage curtailed, he had lost vital body functions including body coordination.
From that moment, Sheldon was paraplegic (meaning he was plagued with multiple disabilities that would impair his senses and functionality). For the next 14 years, Sheldon was mute and hard of hearing. His highly potent and vibrant self was trapped in a semi-vegetative body.
His survival was tied to his parents and all the caregivers that traversed their lives during his painful sojourn on this side of life.
Life oozed out of Sheldon on 14th February 2020.
In his lifetime he never spoke a word, neither did he walk or play with a toy like other children do. He made no friends, since he never went to school. His parents lived with hope that he would one day rise up and walk or call out daddy and mummy. That was never to be.
Such was their painful reality, let alone the prospects of his mother having to quit her job to give Sheldon all the attention he needed to thrive.
Surgical treatment was out of question, either because of the delicacy of the envisaged operation or the attendant costs that would be a luxury to young parents.
Sheldon was on medication since the day he fell to his final breathe. He was partially paralytic and suffered bouts of epilepsy. To contain these conditions, he was put on lifelong medication that was not only expensive but also highly addictive.
Misheck says that spending over Ksh.5,000 per week to provide medication and special diets for Sheldon drained their pockets. You can only count on well wishers during a hospital or home visit, not an entire 14 year stretch!
Life toughened Jasmine and Misheck. Scaling down from a one-bedroom house to a bed-sitter, then to a single room was all cost cutting measure that would never suffice.
Misheck’s productivity at his enterprise was impaired by stress that he suffered given the burden of raising a paralytic child. A week wouldn’t pass without Sheldon being rushed to hospital for a rescuscitative injection or defibrillation to revamp his collapsed lungs.
His burial was a very sad event.
On his death, a bystander might have thought, the huge physical and emotional burden had been taken off from the family. But, such is the hostile planet we live in.
Survival of the fittest was the Darwinian evolutionary theory. Sadly, the unfit had to give way. Sheldon won’t be remembered for a sterling performance in KCPE, but largely for the life he never lived or the many things that able bodied people enjoy without a blink in the eye.
Sheldon left a memory that Jasmine and Misheck will carry for a long time. He was their child, their first child. Did he go straight to heaven or will he wait in paradise for judgment over things he never experienced?
Such innocence. He may have been born a sinner, but we presume that Sheldon never did or thought evil. His father wasn’t as overwhelmed during the burial as one would have expected. He only said, “My child is dead, and I can’t bring him back again. I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”
As his family and friends filled his graveyard with soil, the pastor summed up his funeral saying, “Sheldon has rested. It is God who gave and God has now taken him away, glory to his name.” He is now walking with Jesus and dancing with the angels.
The story is inspired by my friends, Anthony and Alice. You are the un-celebrated heroes who raised your son, Ritchie and painfully walked with him in life, till his death. Ritchie, safiri salama tutaonana baadaye. You make our complains in life meaningless and baseless.
Joseph Ngaara is inspired by people’s life experiences. Do you have a intriguing life story and need a ghost writer? Email: j.mungai@hotmail.co.uk
This is a heart felt story that has left me crying.
Waau, a Plight with mixed reactions. I see love, sacrifice & suffering yet it’s a duty if escaped; one can’t fulfil the purpose of life assigned by our maker. The city of Nineveh was spared by God since it had many people who could not tell their right hand from their left and so one is counted as a sinner after the know of right and wrong and choose to do the latter. Thanks Ngaara keep on the spirit for you inspire many.
This is deeply moving. It is a reminder that we have every reason to be grateful for the so called ‘simple’ things in life. You are a good writer.