Hockey player Nandera battles strange leg injury
Winnie Nandera
KAMPALA- Weatherhead defender Winnie Nandera has not been able to walk or leave her bed for over two months. What started as a stomach upset over three months ago transformed into a life and career threatening condition that she continues to battle at Nsambya Hospital.
“I went for a check up at Naguru Hospital and I was told by a nurse that I had ulcers,” Nandera, 23, recalls how her troubles started.
“I had never suffered from ulcers so I thought I would be fine. I even travelled to Tanzania to visit a friend but while there the condition got worse.
“In Tanzania, I was treated for a UTI (urinary tract infection). But the pain persisted,” she continues.
Eventually, this strange condition started to reveal itself in form of a swelling around her right knee and thigh.
Septic arthritis
“I had never had any form of injury on my legs so I was shocked,” the midfielder, a pioneer of Weatherhead Jaguars set up in 2011, adds. Before her health took this hit, she had become such an integral member of Jaguars that she had even started buying jerseys for the team.
She was airlifted back home and admitted at National Referral Hospital in Kiruddu, during the week leading to March 18, from where she was referred to the main Mulago Hospital for surgery.
A microbiology report from Mulago, seen by her former Weatherhead chairperson Jackie Namyalo, shows she had septic arthritis.
According to a Google, septic arthritis is caused by bacteria or fungus. The condition is an inflammation of a joint and large joints such as the knee or hip.
She underwent surgery on April 1 and after three days returned to Kiruddu to continue the healing process. But she was told to return to Mulago. Out of frustration and lack of money – all her mother’s savings had been utilized up at this point that they could not even afford cotton wool to clean the wound – they decided to self discharge themselves and return along Salaama Road on April 9.
“I suffer from high blood pressure so I usually save the little money I get just in case I get an attack. That is the money we used but it was finished,” her mother Rebecca Namuli, said. Namuli, a single mother of three, has not had any medical attention for her condition since she started the fight to get her youngest daughter to walk again.
Weatherhead get involved
At this point, her club intervened. It was more than a timely intervention for Nandera who wanted to end her life.
“The operation was done and we thought I was going to get better but the condition got worse. The whole house was stinking of pus and I could not handle the pain. I wanted to die, I wanted to take poison and die,” a teary Nandera tells me. Perhaps, her limited mobility stopped her.
Dr Emmanuel Ewochu, of CORSU Hospital Kisubi, says septic arthritis can be treated with antibiotics but warns that this is a condition that can recur and cause stiffness of the bones so the healing process should be aided by physiotherapy.
Nandera was taken to Naguru the night of Friday April 14, amidst fear and hope. More pus was drained while another scan showed an infection in the skin around her knee bone. The condition as feared had recurred.
“On Sunday we took her to Nsambya and then an operation was done on April 18. On April 20 they drained the pus out of her body,” Namyalo reveals.
Since April 16, Weatherhead members have paid Shs60,000 per day for her hospital bed, Shs165,000 per day for her intravenous therapy to clear out the infection and also support the family with the meals.
“Can you imagine, they drained two litres of pus out of me? Yet that was after days of draining pus both at home and in hospitals,” Nandera, who says she misses playing hockey, muses.
The stench is gone and Nandera, who is “forever grateful to my club and I believe I will play hockey again,” continues to receive help from Weatherhead and well-wishers.
Any kind of help to the player can be sent to Fatumah Namubiru on 0758464965.
