SH1M TO RETRIEVE WOMAN’S SKULL BONES PRESERVED IN HER STOMACH

SH1M TO RETRIEVE WOMAN’S SKULL BONES PRESERVED IN HER STOMACH

BEFORE AND AFTER: Ms Rose Mbula who injured her head after falling off a skyscrapper in India in 2014. PHOTO | COURTESY

By EVELYNE MUSAMBI

Rose Mbula has in less than a year changed from a beautiful, bubbly young woman to a bed-ridden patient with a dismantled skull.

Having part of your skull preserved inside her stomach is a nightmare the 25-year-old woman from Ol Donyo Sabuk has lived with for the last six months.

Her parents and five siblings have exhausted all avenues to raise Sh700,000, for the reconstruction surgery, and an additional Sh300,000 for travelling to India and other expenses.

When Nairobi News spoke to her aunt Florence Ndolo, who recently organised a fundraiser to meet the therapy expenses, she was hopeful that well-wishers would help the young woman regain her memory.

GREENER PASTURES

It all started when she left Kenya in November 2014 in search of greener pastures at an undisclosed location in India, only for her family to receive a call from the Kenyan high commission in India five months later informing them that Ms Mbula had fallen off a skyscraper.

“She had only called her mother once (during her stay in India) informing her that she was yet to settle down but promised to keep in touch, something she never did until her brother-in-law received the sad news,” said Ms Ndolo.

The Kenyan high commission gave the family scanty details it had gathered from the hospital because the people who took her to there did not leave their contacts.

“We never got to know what she was doing in that building when she fell; the high commission did not have any information on her employer,” said Ms Ndolo.

Doctors who received Ms Mbula at the Indian hospital carried out an emergency surgery to stop the heavy bleeding from her head.

SKULL BONES IN STOMACH

They then removed her skull bones and preserved them in her stomach, and later assured her kin that they would be retrieved and used to reconstruct her skull.

This is a standard practice for people with head injuries. The skull bones are inserted in the stomach to preserve them at body temperature.

Ms Mbula’s brother in law travelled to India where he found her in a comma and had to wait for two months before she could wake up and be allowed to travel back home.

“The Kenyan high commission in India catered for the hospital bill accrued but said it could not fund her reconstruction surgery because she had not registered with them when she arrived there,” Ms Ndolo toldNairobi News.

The brother-in-law obtained details of the required funds for Ms Mbula’s surgery and the doctors assured him that after surgery she would regain her memory.

HOME THERAPY

The young woman was flown to her parents’ home in Kilimambogo, Ol Donyo Sabuk where her mother has been taking care of her.

The family consulted doctors at Thika level 5 Hospital and got a specialist who frequents their home to carry out therapy to help her be able to walk again.

“The funds we have been raising so far – around Sh143, 000 –  have catered for her therapy and special diet because she cannot feed normally,” said Mbula’s aunt.

The family is appealing to well-wishers to help their daughter undergo the much needed reconstruction surgery so that she can regain her memory.

The last born of five siblings often mumbles clueless statements to her family members whom she cannot recall and at one time even asked her aunt, Ms Ndolo, “Oh Professor, umekuja tena?”