Error 404

HDU HORRORS

It started with a simple headache, but then, most catastrophes begin with ‘simple’ things don’t they? Like that car wreck story in England that cost 12 or so lives because of a bee flying in through one drivers window.

Simple.

When we look back at disasters we begin to isolate incidences and innocent mistakes or magnify simple misunderstandings that turn a gorgeous day into a mournful wreck and you’re left wondering, literary, wtf?? Then we begin pointing those nasty blame fingers.

Let’s see what this disaster was and if blame should be the end result…

So, I’m 50 and recently became bloody proud of it because despite what I call forever living in hospitals due to some fortuitous and chance games that the gods have decided to play with me and my [sexy] bod, I keep getting out of the hospitals and shouting SHAME!! at them and getting my groove back… [yes. Stella pun intended!!] …so, really,  my name isn’t Nyakio for nothing. It means Hardworking and loving hard. I do. I will shake aromat all over my life and make it happen, happily, and put smiles on my face as well as all those around me… because after all, life is too short, ja??

That sentence is for those who think that staring at a ceiling in HDU is okay for a 50 year old mama.

Put it that way, it’s almost okay and alright to belittle myself like that, but looking at the other side of my coin and my absolute nuttiness (flavor – almond) – it doesn’t make sense. The same way a friend calls you and tells you in a shocked whisper (or shout- you know, those friends who you love to bits but jamaani!!! they just SHOUT all.the.time. yes, that one) so, you get this phone call and it goes like this:

Your friend: Haiya, did you hear about Naomi

You: What?

Your friend: Woiye… she had a heart attack just like that, pap, gone

You: Aki? Naomi which one?

Your friend: Si that 26 year old babe, the one who works for that cement factory and drove one of those foreign model cars..

You: [In shock] - Naomi the 26 babe has died of a stroke?

Your friend: Acha, mambo za siku hizi… ya, imagine, I was at her birthday bash just last month… woiye… her poor kid and boyfee…the wedo was next month you know… it’s so so sad!!! [weeps on phone].

That sounds really sad, doesn’t it. Really. Sorry for killing you so softly Naomi, but it’s just an example, revive. Thing is, let’s replace the same entire convo with the name Nyakio: Or your name. Yes. Use your name.

Your friend: Haiya, did you hear about Nyakio?

You: What?

Your friend : Woiye… she had a heart attack just like that, pap, gone

You: Ati kii? Nyakio which one?

Your friend: Si that 50 year old mathee, the one who works for that cement factory and drove one of those foreign model cars..

You: Nyakio that one died of stroke? Chick, what’s your problem? She was 50. Aki, go buy a black chique outfit and tell me when the funeral is and matangas … she’s lived a life, wait, let me call her daughter, you know her daughter is Naomi’s age… let me call and ask for the 411…

But I found out that it doesn’t play out quite like that.

Life isn’t that immaterial, oh no. It’s deep. As far as I’m concerned, mine is going to go on for another 50 years or so, I mean, I need to be hugged by my Boo a few more times and kissed senseless like I’m 17, I need to laugh at some brilliant comedy with Johnny Depp in it until I cry tears and my ribs hurt from laughter, I need to meet all my mad insane female friends scattered across Africa and do a pyjama party of immense and magnitudinal proportions, so…why pack up now? That’s me. Just saying..

Hello you - reading this.

Why do you want to pack up now?

Why are you living your life like you don’t seriously give a flying goose?  And it’s not hard to know this simple truth, try having a conversation with a millennium and you get all these robotic answers if you ask, WHY are you doing what you’re doing …

Answer : because, um, err..because, ya, you know, life ya…yah, you know.. like..

[blank].

So when I was wheeled into the HDU unit and told, here you must stay, I panicked.

Total. We all know, HDU IS the ERROR 404 as far as body is concerned and if the IT guys  can’t fix your simple mulika mwizi laptop in the office (if it’s not a Mac, then it’s a mulika mwizi, basi!!! hahahahahaaa)… sema sasa when it’s you with an error 404.  And my team of docs, they really, really, didn’t know quite what was cutting with me. Yes, I had a headache, and my blood pressure was in the 300 over 200’s, but… WHY?… so they’d try this and rule that out and try this other one and rule that out and take this test and poke there and prod there…. [Ok, those are sad details acha tu..]

As in, these guys in their blue pajama suits and crocs and unhelpful smiles were serious unto death. Get onto this bed and lie down, and in less than half an hour, I had been hooked up to some serious major expensive machines, had drips on both arms and my phone – horrors!! MY PHONE was taken from me. No wtf, (whatsapp, twitter and facebook) seriously?

Because of a headache…

Later on my Doc kinda hinted at what it was I had (if they hint you don’t panic and go ballistic) but I duh, checked it up later on when I got home and apparently it’s one of those extremely RARE cases that knocks out only 1% of the population and again I say, the gods are really having fun with me. 30 minutes later into that Doctors clinic and you’d be admiring my ashes right now. In the Kintsugi Urn.

And this is the difficult part.

I’m writing this and crying and shaking and getting weepy every 5 minutes like some weird push-a-button-she’s-gonna-break-down-females – the ones you avoid like a malenge. Me, I’m fun loving. I’ve been through hell and back and yet, this visit to HDU is still in my blood, shaking it and frothing it and I’m asking, y y y y?? Sleeping alone is the hardest, I wake up in total panic mode.

But because I’m the Queen of Kiambu plus a very very IP (I so am), I’m at that point of more like, hey, we get what we get, we get over it, and we get on with it. No two ways out.

Because in HDU, there are only 2 doors out. Either through ICU and then out through a coffin – which I detest and told my daughters to please, hey, it’s NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Me – it’s burning to ashes and set those in an urn. What was infuriating me was that I hadn’t bought the urn yet and it didn’t look like I was going to be let out to buy one. So… I had to take the other option – get well and walk out of HDU.

Ladies, Guys too… I’m talking to you all. Old. Young. Youthful. Oldish – and pampered like ..like.. hmm… ok, Queen Elizabeth (safe bet) or those older women we see with with 20 bob in her pocket for fare, so if it rains and the mat’s hike the fare…yah.

Listen,… Africa is hard and totally unrelenting. She’s a bitch on a good day. She’s also totally gorgeous, and magnificently gloriously beautiful and she has a soul that will hold you and hug you so hard that all your broken bits get knit back together again.

So, Get up.

It’s hard, we’ve all been through shit, some of us have literally eaten it, been smeared in it, gotten stuck in it (the Bible calls it Mirey Clay) but we don’t need to look like we have, I mean, like, yuk. Seriously, Why do some of you DO THAT?

Stopit!

Because like Africa, we’re African delicious beautiful beautiful women. [#nohomo me like men too much]… but, yes, we African women (esp Kenyans) are beautiful and hard bitches on our best days, but with souls deeper and fuller with love than lake Tanganika (yes, it’s the DEEPEST lake in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD).

So,

     you got that in you.

Yap.

Live it.

People, my body is weak and nothing works like it used to. I’m lethargic and falling asleep at the drop of a hat – so I have to avoid wearing them (…sob. How I love my hats). I also have to keep mentally charged and challenged - which is ok, as most of my friends are beyond Looney Tunes® insane and I understand that Android phones need more charging than a regular mulika mwizi…proof I need more charging… I’m no regular person.

My bed side table doesn’t contain my favorite novels anymore, but a miscellanea pharmacy of ‘controlled’ drugs which the Doc said I have to take for another 50 years. (sigh) anything to avoid HDU. If I get hit by a Paradiso, that’s a different thing, but no, Haiya, I will swallow those drugs daily to keep the headaches and HBP away.

Off the alcohol and on the drugs, I tell you, these gods, they’re jokers.

… so… what’s your excuse for not bounding out of bed with enough zest and bubbly to make everyone around you thankful that THEY are alive? Coz this story isn’t about you.. it’s about making the people in your life ridiculously happy and to let them know that they are totally loved.

For you? Bound out of bed because Life is just awesome, beautiful, tender like a newborn babe, sweet and juicy like a sun-ripened mango eaten with the juices running down your shirt and not giving a damn coz that fruit is just… divine??

How will you know your quintessence, your vital organism, your self, your SOUL?

How will you know how much love you have in your inner you if you don’t try and dive into your own lake Tanganika? Love for yourself, for life, for song and dance and laughter, love of Life…

How will you know how life looks like underwater with your eyes wide open, how will you learn that love hurts so unbearably and yet, you can’t live without it? How can you know how it feels like to breath underwater and not drown? How will you know what your Purpose is unless you try every crazy thing there is to try out there and discover through your mistakes what your Passion is? And How will you know that a little craziness spread on your bread each morning for breakfast is far healthier, funnier and so much sweeter than jam!

You get up,

shrug it off,

say okay, it’s tough,

and you get going…

with a smile that rocks the world!!

Nyakio J. Munyinyi for the XpenSieve Report© JUNE 2014

[Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to xPenSieve© with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Headline banner design by NJMunyinyi.]