Seven months after six-year-old’s surgery: Though I have just one kidney, I feel better now

For so many years, Miss Williams battled an ailment that defied medical solution. The six-year-old later found succour via an article in SUNDAY PUNCH seven months ago. KAYODE FALADE paid her family a visit

Six years old Miss Williams (not real name) was hopping on a leg, bouncing all around the large compound which housed her parents’ modest two-bedroom bungalow when our correspondent walked in. Her brother was trailing behind.

On sighting him, she flew into his hands, asking him if he had come for her daddy’s birthday.

For those who saw little Miss Williams before last September, the little girl bouncing around is a miracle. Reason: Miss Williams then was a living shell of a human being. For a long while, her parents had been running from pillar to post trying to find a cure to her ailment.

For no fewer than three times, the little girl had suffered partial paralysis on her face. After restructures by therapies, she often had a relapse. Her parents were confounded. Visits to hospitals after hospitals, healing homes and worship centres did not take the cross away. Miss Williams wore a contorted face, ate funny, always had a high temperature, severe headaches and a distended stomach.

Providence was to smile on the family one quiet afternoon, when her mother, a teacher of English language in a government school in Lagos, got a copy of SUNDAY PUNCH from their landlord, flipped through and arrived at the health section. When she got to the Sunday Doctor column, all the symptoms exhibited by her daughter were described in the column written by a paediatrician surgeon, Dr. Sylvester Ikhisemojie. The July 20, 2014 edition of the column focused on ‘Hypertension in Children.’ After reading the column, which described all the symptoms her child was exhibiting, that was the first time she knew her child was hypertensive. She got in touch with Ikhisemojie who asked her to bring Miss Williams for medical tests. It was further discovered that she had a faulty kidney.

On September 10, 2014, Miss Williams underwent a surgery to remove a diseased kidney which was the cause of her high blood pressure and partial strokes which led to the paralysis of a side of her face. The surgery was performed by Ikhisemojie and his team at the JK Randle Children Hospital, Lagos.

Seven months after, the little girl is in good health.While inside her parents’ sitting room, Miss Williams, who wants to be a teacher, gave our correspondent a stark summation of her situation.

She said, “My mummy said I have only one kidney. Therefore, I have to be very careful, I should drink a lot of water, eat fruits and be clean.”

Smiling benignly, her mum answered to the quizzical look on our correspondent’s face, “ Yes, she has to know the reality of her health status. I have to let her know.”