It wasn’t until I was told that I would lose my hearing that I understood how absolutely morbid medical negligence is.
It wasn’t until I sat in that chair and listened to the doctor tell me that the damage to my middle ear would make my hearing get exponentially worse till something intense or traumatic, as childbirth happens to me, after which I’ll likely lose my hearing for life, that I understood how just one wrong diagnosis, one careless or hastily done medical check-up, one wrong statement can alter the entire existence of a person.
Fighting bitter tears, willing my fingers to stop shaking, my heart to stop palpitating, I started texting my sister and my partner to let them know that their loved one may, at some point, be unable to hear their voices ever again. Turns out, after a subsequent series of checks, they found a flaw in that diagnosis.
While the diagnosis itself was correct, the previous doctor failed to perform a particular test first before sending me to the next doctor for the this test. So, instead of a regular Flushing, I underwent Pure Tone Audiometry (PTA), and that was how the flawed diagnosis came about.
So, while I was grateful to God that I would not lose my hearing after all, I began to wonder what would have happened if the negligence had run its course. I had already been recommended hearing aids that I didn’t need simply because one person was in a rush, did a hasty check, and made a bad call on my health.
It’s why I cannot fault Chimamanda Adichie for saying she will never return to Nigeria. There’s something about nurturing a child in your womb, giving them life, and then losing that child because of medical negligence that utterly changes you as a person.
It rewires your entire structuring, so much so that the very resilience and faith in a country you talk about ever so beautifully is irredeemably lost. You don’t know what it means to lose someone not because it was that person’s time to go, but because you happened to be in a place without good healthcare and surrounded by people audacious enough to be careless with human life.
You don’t know the kind of resentment you may live with for the rest of your life. First with yourself, then with the environment and factors responsible and then yourself again. All because of one bad call. All because of carelessness. All because of negligence in the one sector that cannot afford to be so. The health sector.
It is also why, even though I was one of those who felt like the institution which expelled those medical students for participating in that “Take care of yourself, na Gen Z full hospital now” TikTok trend was doing too much, I’ve come to realize how flawed my thinking was, and invariably understand how such a statement would sound to someone who was nearly a victim of medical negligence. To someone who has suffered loss on account of medical negligence. To someone like Chimamanda Adichie.
Sadly, it had to take me being an almost-victim to realize just how devastatingly evil medical negligence is. It’s also made me rethink how some of my perspectives may only be because I did not put myself in the shoes of the right people.
Either way, if you’re reading this and you’re a medical personnel, or aspiring to be a medical personnel, please understand that you bear the responsibility for every call on someone’s life borne out of negligence. This country is already unbearable in every sense of the word. The least you can do is ensure that you play no part in why Nigeria happened to someone.
If you’re also reading this, and you have ever been a victim of negligence, either because it happened to you, or someone you love suffered it, I hope you can someday let go of the resentment in your heart. And understand that it was not your fault.
May we find peace within our hearts, may we learn to give grace to ourselves and those around us, and may we never forget that we may only have so much to say on an issue because it hasn’t happened to us.
Thank you.
Jhymi🖤
Images are mine.