By Obiajulu Agu
As the day draws nearer, I’m filled with trepidation. This is at long last after a long while as I’m poised in a few days to keep another appointment at the Spine Clinic, National Orthopaedic Hospital Igbobi Lagos (NOHIL), Monday, October 19, 2026.
Following a brutish assault on my person and properties in Apapa by operatives of the Lagos State Taskforce on Environmental and Other Offences Unit, simply called Lagos State Taskforce in the course of my journalistic duties, I suffered spinal disc damage. The unit had then been under the chairmanship of then Superintendent Bayo Sulaiman, a Supreme Commander, while a p Ajayi led the horde that brazenly attacked me for filming the operatives brazenly making quick bucks by extorting alleged commercial motorcycles. The Ministry overseeing the Taskforce was then under the watch of the then Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Mr Tunji Bello, under then Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola.
Undoubtedly, law enforcement was not in their hearts and minds, but my intended murder dwelt within the goons that fateful day. The Lagos State Taskforce had obviously set out to kill me extrajudicially, but, thankfully, because God was with me, failed in the evil mission. I was, however, later to discover that the feral lawmen had ruined my spinal disc.
After a number of years battling terrible back pain, I was finally compelled to request a referral from my general practitioner to the National Orthopaedic Hospital Igbobi Lagos in the last quarter of 2023.
At NOHIL, I ended up at the Spine Clinic, which after series of tests, including various X-rays, Computed Tomography (CT) scans and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRIs), diagnosed me of lumbar Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD) owing to the beastly attack by the Lagos State Taskforce. Alongside the Spine Clinic, I was attending the Physiotherapy Clinic, but had to stop when paraplegia set in. I could still manage to attend the Spine Clinic, but the impossible logistics foreclosed my continuing with the physiotherapy sessions when I became crippled.
Gradually, corrective surgery was recommended by the consultant, and I began to pray and look forward for a date to be scheduled. I became hopeful of the date coming to fruition soon enough when the NOHIL Administrative Office issued me the list of requirements for the procedure and I ensured that the funds in my hospital wallet covered it. Curiously, on what was meant to be my last visit prior to the surgery, one of the doctors at the Spine Clinic, in spite of the surgery needs, having been calculated and paid for to the hospital, went on to order that I procure blood yet again from a donor.
The surgery has thus far not been effected, while the paraplegia, which has crippled me and added to the complications of the lumbar degenerative disc disease has been compounded by the atrophy of my left leg.
Initially when the procedure was scheduled, the explanation by the hospital authorities had been that there were a number of people listed before me and that I would be summoned in due course. For the longest of times, I wasn’t called by the hospital; not until a certain day I was called out of the blues and drafted to take the place of some other patient who couldn’t honour his or her own date. I couldn’t attend the hospital that day because I had no one to help me out in managing the logistics since I was paraplegic and crippled. I told the persons that called me that much. Since that day the hospital has not reached me again. When I reached the number that had called me, a woman told me that she has since been moved from the unit on which behalf she had called me.
After so much silence from the hospital, I decided to again attend the Spine Clinic, booking an October 19, 2026, date. Hopefully, the doctors would again recollect my case and at last go on to effect the procedure. Although, I’m surely looking forward to the hospital appointment, a part of me is enveloped by angst about the possibilities of my yet requiring CT scan and MRI and the excruciating pains of the processes of placing and retrieving me from either equipment. Usually, a CT scan is a painless medical imaging test that combines specialized X-ray equipment and computers to create detailed cross-sectional and 3D images of the inside of the body. Also painless, an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is a safe, radiation-free medical imaging test that uses powerful magnets and radio waves to create detailed pictures of the inside of the body. The ruined state of my body has since turned my undergoing either CT scan and MRI into hellish experiences.
Part of the source of worries regarding my hospital visit going forward is the fee for each of the doctor’s consultancy session that has since spiked by 500 by per cent. I’m fervently praying that that my wallet will not dip enough to signify great shortage.
Three years have fled past me since I began attending the National Orthopaedic Hospital Igbobi Lagos without having had the surgery, the raison d’être, for my attending the hospital been done yet. I’m yet praying to have a successful surgery. As it is, I would rather choose the rest of a life being able to limp around on my feet with a walking stick than the crippled state that has befallen me. I desperately wish to walk again. Walking again is a great novelty I sincerely wish to again have the joyful experience of in my life. I have faith that I will get back on my feet and walk again. My returning on my feet and using them again will never in any way compare with my prolonged paraplegic and crippled state.
My anxiety to get back the use of my feet is also hinged on the fact that my orthopaedic problems are also affecting other aspects of my well-being. I’ve been a glasses user for over two-thirds of my life thus far, and my very limited mobility has also drastically restricted my visits to the opthalmologist and optician’s. Thus my eyes have been deteriorating since routine tests at an eye doctor’s couldn’t be conducted outdoors as in an outreach. Sadly, we are not in a society where convenient wheelchair-accessible purpose-built buildings for medical uses are readily available. So, my eyes join in my sufferings instigated by my decrepit spine.
But, will the die be at last cast on October 19, 2026, for my surgery to be done? If not on that day, will the procedure be the next day? Or will it be certain to hold on some nearby date? I am thoroughly fed up with the endless waiting! I truly so much hate the persisting delay in the prescribed corrective surgery for my lumbar degenerative disc disease by the Spine Clinic, National Orthopaedic Hospital Igbobi Lagos!
What more ruin will I have to contend with and suffer to experience that seemingly all-elusive corrective surgery?
The post A reporter’s unending ordeals: How I hate persisting delay of my DDD corrective surgery appeared first on The Sun Nigeria.
<small>Source: The Sun Nigeria — read the original story there.</small>
