At her family house at Osu, in the Greater Accra Region, 13-year-old Pamela Wayor sat on a wooden bench.
From a distance, I could count her ribs when she lowered the piece of cloth tied to her chest. Little Pamela looks lanky and terribly emaciated with a pot belly. On her face are blisters and on her thighs are sores.
On Thursday, May 11, 2017, when I paid her a visit, she looked as though she will not survive the next day. But, the pupil of Amasaman MA Primary School who is battling Type 1 diabetes [T1D] looked much lively on my next day’s visit.
“Do not scratch them,” says Esther Wayor, mother of Pamela. The blisters on Pamela’s face and thighs itch and she cannot but scratch them off. That, which her mother disapproves. When she scratches them, they develop into sores compounding her woes.
“She was diagnosed of diabetes at age nine and she is 13 years now. It was when we took her to the Achimota Hospital that we got to know of her ailment,” the worried mother soberly tells me.
Esther Wayor says for the whole of the 2016 Christmas festivities she and her daughter spent it at the Achimota Hospital receiving treatment. The hospital had taught her how to inject Pamela with insulin. And so, she has, since the doctors broke the heart-wrecking news to her, become a home nurse.
“They taught me how to inject her with insulin. I do everything for her; morning and evening. In the last few years, we have been spending days at the Achimota Hospital and Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for treatment. Even last year’s Christmas we were at the hospital,” says Esther Wayor.
On my second day of visiting Pamela I got so sad that I found the life we live meaningless. Here is a little girl who would have to endure pricking of her thumb with syringe in every morning and evening. This, her mother tells me is a way of checking on Pamela’s blood sugar level. As if this is not enough, after the pricking of the thumb comes the injection of insulin. Another hard-to-endure moment for Pamela.
“Oh you can touch her shoulder [Esther Wayor points to where she injects Pamela with insulin]. Since it’s a daily exercise, that point of her shoulder is somewhat swollen.”
Esther Wayor orders for the drugs, syringe and device she uses to check her daughter’s blood sugar level, among others, be brought to me for viewing. The device which has an inscription “True result” written on it uses some strips in checking for the sugar level.
I was, again, shocked to learn that she had ran out of these strips. The absence of the strips could spell doom and it once nearly did.
“Pamela once collapsed [Esther Wayor says as she intermittently paused and sighed]. When we rushed her to the hospital we were told her sugar level was very low.
“Whenever I check and I realise she has low sugar level, I give her a little amount of sugar or a quantity of Coca Cola. But … since we had ran out of the strips used for the testing, that resulted in her collapsing. I could not test to see her sugar level at all.”
Eric is an uncle of Pamela. Like the siblings of Pamela, Eric is equally troubled by the little girl’s situation. He tells me he wonders how Pamela contracted the disease. “She is my niece. Her illness is a big worry to us. One cannot just understand how a little girl like her got diagnosed of diabetes.”
Indeed, diabetes had for long been perceived to be a disease of the affluent in society. With time, the perception narrowed down to adults in general. And now it is heart-throbbing admitting each one of us is prone to the disease. Diabetes is no respecter of persons.
According to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation [JDRF], “millions of people around the world live with type 1 diabetes (T1D), a life-threatening autoimmune disease that strikes both children and adults.”
On the JDRF’s website; “there is no way to prevent it [T1D], and at present, no cure. JDRF works every day to change this by amassing grassroots support, deep scientific knowledge and strong industry and academic partnerships to fund research.”
Nonetheless, Pamela Wayor believes someone could cure her of her sickness despite none existence a scientific cure.
“When you pray what do you tell God?” I asked Pamela.
Silent for a while, she responded while scratching her blisters.
“When I pray I tell God to help me.”
Pamela Wayor like the country musician Byran White is asking God not for anything big but just ‘one small miracle’ of healing.
On Sunday, May 14 2017, a day before I aired this story on 3FM (92.7), I had a call that the little girl had been rushed to the Achimota Hospital. She has had oxygen on her till Wednesday, May 17.
Pamela Wayor is due to be discharged from the hospital but even with that, her mother is worried of the financial burden on her. She has no money for the purchase of strips to test her daughter’s blood sugar level.
Perhaps, you may be like Mr. & Mrs. Pobi, family friends of the Wayors, who are supporting Pamela in prayers. Or rather, that philanthropist who could support the girl whose life is on hold with any little amount you can offer.
The writer is a broadcast journalist with 3FM 92.7. Views expressed in this piece are solely his and not that of his organisation.
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