If you are an ardent listener of Radio Jambos popular morning show ‘Patanisho’, you must have heard presenter Gidi Ogidi say that his co-presenter Ghost Mulee ‘anaombea kipindi’ (praying for the program); code phrase for Mulee catching a nap or falling asleep mid-show.

Prior to April this year, the Harambee Stars coach used to experience sudden exhaustion, and would get breathless when speaking and start gasping for breath.

In fact when driving, he would occasionally experience sudden fatigue and become sleepy.

“I’d have to pack the car on the roadside and catch a one hour to one hour thirty minutes sleep to refresh before I resume driving.”

The cold weather affected him and never took a shower. During the chilly months of June and July, he described how went to work dressed in thick jackets, scarfs, and caps to keep warm.

Mulee told the Star in an interview on Monday that he had embraced this all his life. His doctors had told him during his annual medical examinations that he experienced that because he had an allergy and had just to make do with it. Until he went to India to donate one of his kidneys to his elder brother early this year.

The trip turned on its head as the kidney specialist that reviewed his brother’s condition cleared him from the cut, despite an earlier recommendation by a Nairobi doctor. The condition did not need Ghost giving his kidney. He said his brother was treated well, recovered, and is now back to his normal life.

So the plan changed. Ghost was set to travel back to Nairobi, but just before that, he decided to do his annual full body checkup in the country. An encounter with an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist would change the plans, again, as she flagged what appeared to be a deadly throat growth that needed urgent surgical correction to save his life.

“The doctor said I was living on borrowed time. It was a miracle that I walked in myself, that I was a life,” he said.

Further, tests, dubbed as sleep tests would diagnose the 52-year-old football tactician with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). It is the most common sleep-related breathing disorder and is characterized by recurrent episodes of complete or partial obstruction of the upper airway leading to reduced or absent breathing during sleep.

The episodes are termed "apneas" with complete or near-complete cessation of breathing, or "hypopneas" when the reduction in breathing is partial. In either case, a fall in blood oxygen saturation, a disruption in sleep, or both may result. A high frequency of apneas or hypopneas during sleep may interfere with restorative sleep, which—in combination with disturbances in blood oxygenation—is thought to contribute to negative consequences to health and quality of life.

“I should have died in sleep. I was shocked because I have been taking tabs

The coach would then be booked into a surgical theatre to cut off a large mass of growth at the base of his tongue adjacent to his throat. This mass, the doctors told him, was obstructing his breathing system and altering the rhythm, putting his life in abiding danger.

During the time, the ministry of health in Nairobi ordered a lockdown to contain the third wave of Covid-19 infection spread. All flights from India were barred, meaning that he had some more days to spend abroad, and more expenses while at it.

As he recuperated, he said, he would do a daily two-hour run at his hotel balcony while listening to their popular drive show, fading off the pain and binding the wounds.

The procedure was not just a lifesaver, he said, it also removed the burden of having to clad extra heavy to keep warm. He is now alert during their morning show and does not fall asleep anyhow.

"I can now take a cold shower, and I'm very alert, not falling asleep anywhere."

Failing healthcare

So if he had believed the assessment of his general practitioner doctors in top Nairobi hospital, probably he would have slept one day, and never woke up, for good.

“It is very annoying if you think of it,” he said, adding that the fact that the exercise was far cheaper in India than in Nairobi makes it more exasperating.

“I pay like Sh200,000 here for the whole body examination and it is done by a general practitioner. But in India, I paid Sh30,000 equivalent and I got examined by multiple specialists focusing on different organs of the body,” he said.

According to the radio presenter known for his trademark raucous laughter on-air, his affordable medical intervention experience in the land of Singh was a direct indictment on the quality of the medical care that the doctors and the government dispense to Kenyans.

Doctors who have monetized their service, seeking to get rich quickly hence scamming their sick patients to their grave are part of the intricate problem, he added.

"There are efficient medical services in India, complete with modern machinery and government financing to citizens so that they can walk into the public facilities and have the attention they need free of charge. That is exactly the opposite of what we have here. We are in a mess," he explained.