Mugweri lost a leg, but can walk again

He stood up. Once, twice, thrice. On all occasions, he fell. “That’s when I knew I had broken my leg,” 26-year-old Reagan Mugweri, recalls the January 28, 2022 crash that nearly took his life.

That Friday, around 7.30pm, Mugweri, an evangelist attached to SDA Church Buziika, was riding home from pastoral errands.

In Kafunta, Njeru Town Council, about two kilometres to his home, a loaded truck parked on the wrong side of the road with lights off. Then suddenly, the truck driver started the engine, with full beam lights, straight in Mugweri’s direction. The reflection on his helmet visor compromied his sight. Panicking in a bid to escape into the other side of the road, Mugweri rammed into the truck.

 “I knew I had hit something but never felt pain.”

That is when he tried to stand up and dust himself to go home. He could not. In the collision, his motorcycle had shattered his left leg and Mugweri was bleeding profusely.

First responders

“People gathered at the scene, but offered little help,” Mugweri said.

He asked them to tell Joseph Mukwaya, a church elder, that his evangelist is in danger.

“But everyone stared on. No one called him.”

Hazy, Mugweri used one of his phones to dial Mukwaya’s number.

“I could not see the light on the phone or the keys. But, I guessed and by God’s mercy the call went through.”

But no one answered the call. Some wanted to take him to Njenga Hospital.

“I told them to take me to Elder Mukwaya’s home, about 100m away.”

As he limped to a bodaboda, another responder helped him and sat behind to support him.

Mukwaya’s sight is weakening with age, and if he must use his car at night, he gets a driver. But that night he had no choice. “It was an emergency. I drove and God was with us,” Mukwaya told us.

 Between Mukwaya’s home in Njeru and the hospital in Jinja—about nine kilometres—Mugweri suffered about five blackouts.

There was debate on which hospital to go to.

“We doubted we could get proper treatment at Jinja Main Hospital,” Mukwaya said. 

By the time they reached St James Orthopaedic and Surgical Centre, more than an hour had passed since the accident, yet the only first aid Mugweri had received was having his coat tied above his knee. It did little to stop the bleeding.

‘Dead by morning’

Mugweri had lost a lot of blood.

“I only had half a litre left in my body,”

Collin Yongule, an orthopaedic officer at St James Orthopaedic and Surgical Centre, Jinja, told us Mugweri was “severely anaemic,” and his haemoglobin count too low to support his life.

Worse still, Mugweri has A negative blood type, a rare blood group, which can only receive A negative and O negative blood. Yet, because O negative blood can be fused with any blood type, it is the first to run out during a shortage, according to the Red Cross.

Before 1901, patients received blood transfusions regardless of blood type. This caused many deaths due to incompatibilities. Nowadays, compatibility is a priority in saving patients adverse effects and sometimes death.

But the search through the night was futile. Mugweri’s life was waning.

In the morning, he would later be told, he was feared dead.

“They said I was motionless and cold as a dead body.”

The doctors were conflicted. How longer could they wait for the perfect blood when a young man’s life was on the brink?

Yongule said they applied O+ blood, which had a “relative degree of compatibility”.

They gave Mugweri drugs to stop his body from overreacting and supplements to generate more blood. The gamble worked.

By Saturday, about 2pm, Mugweri woke up from his blackout to see his family and friends surrounding his bed.

“I didn’t know my situation. But it was just tears from my people.”

Amputation

En route to hospital, in-between the blackouts, Mugweri’s main concern was: ‘shall I be able to stand again?’

The answer was damning: a Doppler scan, Yongule said, showed that the bones of his left leg below the knee were crushed. Worse still, the blood vessels that supply life to the leg were destroyed beyond repair. The doctors decided: amputation was the only option.

That sent almost everyone in tears. Mugweri’s parents could not imagine their first-born and only boy of five children, was going to be one-legged.

In desperation, they suggested alternatives in vain. And delays could invite deadly bone infections.

“At first I could not process it properly; but I said ‘if it is what will save me, let it be.’”

By 6pm Saturday, he was out of the theatre and by Monday, he tried using crutches in the hospital ward. But by Thursday, hardly a week since he was admitted, he was discharged.

“There was much wailing and pain in the casualty ward and the smell could not let me eat. I feared I would not recover there,” he confessed.

Five days later, Mugweri suffered septicaemia, a terrible bacterial infection, which, Yongule said, requires urgent treatment before it causes organ failure as bacteria emit toxins into the bloodstream and to different body parts such as the liver, kidney, and heart.

 “It was so, so painful,” Mugweri said.

Mugweri would return to the hospital daily, for the next three months, taking tablets and at least an injection a day, for at least 90 days.

Every day he spent at least Shs30,000 to fuel Mukwaya’s car for the hospital visits.

“I can’t tell you how much we spent…” Mugweri said with vivid concern. “But I thank God for the church and family members who carried this burden.”

Mukwaya commended St James Hospital for the “special treatment and allowing us to pay in installments”.

Helping hand

At the 26th World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims last November, Works and Transport minister Gen Katumba Wamala prayed that road traffic deaths would reduce by 2022. Instead, they have increased from 3,663 in 2020 to 4,159, according to the 2021 Annual Crime Report.

In 2010 the UN launched a campaign to improve road safety and reduce road traffic deaths and injuries by at least 50 percent by 2030.

In response, Nile Breweries Limited (NBL) contracted Consult Afrika Usalama (CAU), to implement the Ondaba Road Safety Campaign between August and December 2022.

Supported by the AB InBev Foundation, a US non-profit that fights harmful consumption of alcohol, the campaign has improved black spots such as Mitala-Maria junction, Kalandazi, Buwama, on Masaka Road; refurbished Mpigi Health Centre IV to enable it accommodate road crash victims and offered assistive devices to post-crash victims such as Mugweri.

In 2003, Mable Nakitto Tomusange joined the Injury Control Centre Uganda (ICCU) at Mulago Hospital, an organisation founded by surgeons in 1998 that collected data about injuries using evidence-based research from hospitals across the country. The research showed that road traffic crashes were the main cause of injuries. In addition, ICCU did advocacy and training to curb the problem. Unfortunately, due to administrative and financial challenges, ICCU closed in 2013.

In 2014, Tomusange, ICCU’s last executive director, founded Consult Afrika, a social enterprise, to continue her campaign for road safety, through creating awareness, and preaching good road user behaviour.

The architect of the Tweddeko campaign has taken the gospel to schools to curb road and fire accidents.

Around August, six months after his operation, Mugweri tried his luck to get an artificial limb. At CoRSU Rehabilitation Hospital in Kisubi, which offers quality ity subsidised treatments for vulnerable patients.  CoRSU told Tomusange

About Mugweri’s case in October.

He ticked all the boxes: a young man who could lose more in terms of education, employment, relationships after the accident, yet he could not afford the artificial leg.

“Reagan is only 26 years old, and from a humble background,” she said. “And he could have lost much after losing his leg. He badly needed help.”

“We have also provided two shelters for traffic police on Masaka Road so that they do not stop work under harsh weather such as heavy rains or much sunshine,” said Claire Asiimwe, the NBL sustainability manager.

NBL and Consult Afrika Usalama will also train police and bodaboda riders into better first responders and amplify awareness messages through social media..

Coping

Sometimes Mugweri feels blood moving through his lower left leg to the toes yet they are no more. “It is disturbing and hard to explain,” he said. It is called Phantom pain, a psychological pain common among amputees. Yongule said it can even tempt one to abandon their assistive devices, resulting in falls. It occurs for months, a year, or so but can stop with counselling.

“I am training my mind to live without the missing leg,” Mugweri said.

Joyce Nakibirango, an orthopaedic nurse at CoRSU, was impressed by how Mugweri adjusted to the artificial limb. “He was a quick learner; I thought it could take him at least two weeks to walk. To my surprise, he gait-trained for only one week,” she told us.

“I believe he can walk without crutches within a month because we showed him how to walk without any,” she says.

Mugweri returns the favour.

“At first, I was afraid of falling and damaging my stump, but I adjusted soon because the medics are passionate and professional.”

 Maize plants, banana trees, and eucalyptus create a natural ambience, breathing fresh organic air around Mugweri’s two-room house, an extension of the SDA Church Buziika, where he has been an evangelist for nearly three years.

There are stairs on his doorstep.

A section of the pit latrine was modified with a raised concrete for Mugweri’s easy usage.

But, the slanting and bumpy terrain of the front yard is not good for his metallic crutches and an artificial leg.

“I have to move carefully; it’s hard for me to climb or slope.”

What he misses

Mugweri calls himself a hands-on person. He misses digging. Sometimes he wishes he could do things at the same pace as he used to with both legs. “But I cannot. What I used to do in 20 minutes now I do it in 50 minutes. But, I thank God for this artificial limb. I will no longer need to wait for helpers.”

On December 18, Mugweri wants to dress his best, move majestically, without crutches, down the aisle with Lydia Adikin, that day they will become husband and wife.

Serve god for life

Born September 26, 1996, Mugweri’s parents wanted him to be an accountant. But he wanted to be a meteorologist or an architectural engineer, and when he did not make the grade at A- Level, he chose Theology to fulfil his desire to serve God.

. In 2019, Mugweri joined the Prime Institute of Applied Technology And Mass Communication, a Seventh-day Adventist Institute, for a diploma in Theology.

“Our parents were teachers and we saw how much they struggled to provide for us. None of us ever wanted to be a teacher.”

His first year interrupted by Covid-19, then the accident, Mugweri resumed his studies and his pastoral work, reminding people “that God is our creator and has an owning on our life.”