Learners in Ambrose Adeya Adongo Secondary School in Siaya county have been forced to adapt to the disruption their teacher’s oxygen cylinder causes in class as she struggles to stay alive.
Mary Ochieng was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease, which has damaged her lungs, in 2017.
What started as a minor cough in 2017 when she was doing her teaching practicals has over the years defied medication, leading to the collapse of her lungs.
The mother of two has been on medication since diagnosis but things changed in March last year.
“I had an attack on the night of March 15 and was rushed to Bama Hospital next to my place. I was immediately put on oxygen after the doctors at the facility found that my lungs did not have enough oxygen,” Ochieng says.
She says doctors at the facility found that she was not having enough oxygen in her lungs.
At the time, the oxygen saturation in her lungs was 30 per cent against a normal person’s requirement of 90 to 100 per cent.
Ochieng says specialists she has seen in Eldoret and Nairobi advised her to undergo lung transplant.
“The problem is that this cannot be done locally and I have to travel to India,” she says.
Her treatment has, however, exhausted all her savings and that of the family.
The teacher of mathematics and chemistry says she is currently using expensive drugs and is on oxygen 24 hours, something that has affected her work as a teacher.
“I spend more than Sh1,200 on drugs daily to stay alive,” she says.
Ochieng says one of her medical insurance covers helped her cover some expenses but cannot do much as the medicines and other expenses are beyond the cover.
She has urged the government to consider expanding SHIF to cover serious ailments like hers.
Her mother, Claris Oriedi says the family has been left destitute as a result of her first born’s condition and appealed to well-wishers to come to their aid.
Well-wishers can support Ochieng
on 0710104416 or 0727455063.