His Final Two and a Half Weeks

On Monday, 18th April, the Professor suggested that the patient should begin to undergo physio therapy, in preparation for a possible discharge some time during the week. A professional physio therapist, a lady, was called in to conduct the physio therapy sessions. She came on Monday afternoon and made the patient go through a series of exercises. I the course of the physio therapy, she asked the Reverend to mention the places where he had pastored but got to response. Inexplicably, the blood pressure shot up and he began to sweat profusely. The nurses were called in to normalise the situation, but the patient continued to in be a state of total discomfort.

At about 19:00 hours, the same day, while a number of people were visiting, he suddenly sprang up (obviously in agonising pain) and forced himself to speak. He said, "Thank you all for coming. This is our last ever meeting. Thank you, may God bless you." My mum said to him, "What are are yo talking about?". His reply was, "Is there anything else left?". Those were his last words. By that the time the blood pressure had reached 220/130 and the emergency doctor was called in. She (the doctor) quickly prescribed a high blood pressure lowering drug to be placed in his mouth (they normally place such a drug under the tongue) to try and regulate the pressure.

Since he had lost the ability to speak or eat, a feeding tube was inserted through his nostril, and it remained until the last day of his life. Seeing that he was in obvious pain and discomfort, Professor Wirima ordered an injectible analgesic/sedative to be administered, and the patient slept a lot over the next three days.

In the middle of the second week, be began to show signs of improvement. His eyes became alert, and would blink each time an object was brought close to them. As we began the third week, he suffered another setback. He vomited, but the vomit did not come out. It went into the windpipe instead. This caused great breathing difficulty. As a result, he was placed on oxygen. By this time he had slipped into a deep coma. He stayed on oxygen for the remainder of his days in hospital, save for two days when it was decided to remove the oxygen mask to see if he could manage on his own system.

As we were going into the fourth week, I noticed that no urine was passing into the urinal bag. As a lay person, I did not make much out of this but began to suspect that some body systems were packing up. With hindsight, I think I was not entirely wrong in my supposition. The breathing continued to be problematic, and the face had deformed somewhat. It may well be that he suffered a second or even a third stroke. It was just one complication upon another.

On the night of 8th May, the breathing became particularly erratic. The emergency doctor came and recommended that the oxygen level should be increased. We had a difficult night that night. At around 00:30 hours, I noticed that the breath intakes were very wide apart, in some cases longer than a minute. The nurses tried to pump out the mucus, but, as it turned out, very little came out. He took his final breath at 03:30 on 9th May. Following the final breath, some brown fluid oozed out of his mouth. That was it. The man of God had completed his course.