A day after Anastacia Wamuyu was discharged from Tumutumu Hospital in Nyeri County on August 23, 2020 after delivering a baby boy, she discovered that her son had a swelling in the groin area.
Alarmed, she rushed the infant back to the same hospital, seeking to understand what was happening. Doctors said he had undescended testicles, a condition that has become common among boys at birth.
“They told me not to panic as the condition is common and, in some cases the testes come down on their own while in others the condition can be reversed through surgery. I was advised to go back to the hospital with him after six months,” she narrated.
The condition is referred to as cryptorchidism — testicles that fail to drop from the abdomen into the scrotum before birth.
By the seventh month, the testicle still had not dropped. She was referred to a urologist to perform the surgery meant to rectify the condition, which can lead to cancer of the testes or infertility if left untreated.
At the hospital, she was asked to bring back scans that showed the testicle had formed but had not descended to the scrotum and a surgery date was set. The baby was admitted on a Monday for the operation to take place on a Tuesday about two months ago.
Slipping into a coma
The baby was one-and-a-half years old. During surgery, all went south, leading baby Amir to lose his sight and mobility, as well as his feeding and talking ability. He also developed convulsions that would strike every few minutes, day and night.
“I had been told the surgery would not take long but it took almost four and a half hours. When they brought him back, he was unconscious… he remained that way for another three hours. Doctors kept assuring me that he would be okay,” she said.
Observing him in the paediatric ward, she realised that Amir was gasping for air, had a fever and was gnashing his teeth and stiffening his body.
“Some hospital workers came and put him on oxygen… At this point, the operating doctor was nowhere to be seen. I was told he had a heart condition that had not been identified earlier and they had to resuscitate him while in the theatre,” she narrated.
Ms Wamuyu later learnt that though her son’s situation had got out of hand, the operation to bring down the testes had not been performed, though she had Sh100,000 through the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF). There was a slight incision that was covered with a bandage, she said.
“The situation got worse and we were referred to Nyeri County Referral Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU). They claimed their machines were not as good as those at the county hospital, but in reality, I knew it was the cost, since they did not know how long he would be in there,” she said.
On arrival at Nyeri Referral, the baby had to be resuscitated again before slipping into a coma for a week, making it a cumulative two weeks in the ICU.
What transpired
“After examining the baby, the doctors at the referral hospital told me that he did not suffer any heart condition and everything I had been told at the private hospital did not match what was written in the baby’s file,” she said.
It took two weeks for the doctor who had operated on the boy to show up and explain what transpired at the clinic so that doctors at the referral hospital could administer treatment.
Ms Wamuyu said their lives have changed since January. She can no longer go to work as a casual labourer nor leave the homestead or do house chores.
In a week, the family spends Sh6,000 on the baby’s food, medication and other prescribed pharmaceuticals. At the Nelion Doctors’ Plaza, Dr Patrick Mbuthia, the urologist who had tried to treat the baby, admitted to performing the surgery.
“We have done thousands of such surgeries, but we are also not sure what happened… When we administered anaesthesia, I realised his blood pressure,” he said.
“He reacted to the anaesthesia and it was the first incision that I realised the reaction was unusual and we halted the surgery.”
He also stated that, for three hours in the theatre, the medics tried to get the baby out of the anaesthesia and only returned him to the paediatric ward when he was fairly stable. BY DAILY NATION