Childhood sweethearts Walter and Janet Akolo looked forward to a long,
fulfilling time together. They had two children (right), but the arrival
of the youngest sent Janet down a path she never recovered from. PHOTO |
COURTESY | AKOLO FAMILY ALBUM
On February 25 this year, a man logged onto his Facebook account at 4:55am and posted a most heart-wrenching message.
His
wife had died just a few hours earlier, and in that trying moment he
felt compelled to vent out the emotions coursing through his veins.
“My
wife, the late Janet Ciru Akolo, was experiencing severe attacks that
made it difficult for her to breathe, stand or walk,” Walter Akolo
typed.
“They resembled the attacks
she gets with her mental health condition. They got so bad Monday
evening that we had to rush her to hospital. The doctors did the best
they could but on Tuesday, February 24, 2015 at 2:30pm, she had another
nasty attack and breathed her last. Cause of death, cardiac arrest. I
loved her more than anything else on earth. I believe I’ll soon meet her
again in heaven.”
I was trawling
through the Internet when I came across that message, and immediately I
contacted Walter and asked him whether he was willing to share his story
to a larger audience. He agreed.
A
few days later, we met at his Buru Buru home, where friends and family
had gathered to condole with him. He wore a brave face, but I could see
he was a tormented man.
His wife, he
explained, had lately become withdrawn and lonely, somehow convinced
that she was unworthy and a bother. As such, and probably as a way of
trying to pass across a message about her value, she had sought to hurt
the feelings of everyone around her, including their four-month-old son.
SUICIDE ATTEMPTS
Just
three months after giving birth to her son in 2012, Janet Ciru Akolo
had attempted suicide twice, all because she wanted to teach her loved
ones a lesson.
“I just wanted
everyone, including my son and daughter, to suffer the consequences,”
Janet said in a TV interview in November last year.
Her
husband kept a keen eye on her. He had learnt to detect any change of
emotions and behaviour, just as the doctor had advised.
Janet was to later be diagnosed with Post-Partum Depression (PPD), a condition that affects some women soon after giving birth.
“She
would lack sleep, be extremely irritable, have hallucinations and
sometimes even experience episodes of psychosis,” Walter told us last
week.
“She also complained of unclear
pains in her body. That is the time you now become the
for-better-or-for-worse husband that people always promise to be.”
Janet
had, nine years earlier, been diagnosed with a different illness called
Major Depressive Disorder, but the couple had managed to keep her
condition under control. Her husband was aware of the condition and,
through the help of doctors and online research, the couple had kept it
under control.
He had to quit his job
when he discovered that he could stay at home, care for her while at
the same time doing some online jobs to support the family.
“By
the time the second child came, she was not even under medication and
had not experienced any attacks for a very long time,” Walter said. “She
was very stable.”
He had learnt to observe her for the most subtle emotional changes, which always indicated an impending descent to depression.
Her
last and fatal attack began with signs of stress, her not wanting to
talk to anyone, and not wanting to wake up in the morning. The ever
jolly and ever smiling Janet soon became the exact opposite of herself.
MANAGING WELL
“I
could not understand her because, to me, we had been happy,” Walter
said. “We had what she wanted, we had been in constant communication and
I just could not understand how she changed that rapidly. I had never
seen her act like that, even with her chronic illness, and so I was
worried.”
A few years earlier when
the doctor diagnosed Janet’s condition, Walter, a blogger and online
marketer, had started researching about it and its implications.
As a result, he says, he was “already familiar with her pre-existing chronic illness, which we managed to manage very well”.
“It
was now mandatory for me to learn about PPD, as the doctor had already
told me that someone suffering the extremes of such a condition could
hurt her loved ones,” he said.
“In
her case, I was not even worried about the possibility of her hurting
our children; I was more worried about her own welfare.”
She
first attempted suicide one night by massively overdosing on an
analgesic but her husband heard her choking, quickly searched for first
aid solutions online and managed to save her.
“It
was at night, she suddenly became so jovial, kissed everyone goodnight,
told everyone how much she loved them, closed the children’s bedroom
and went to the sitting room,” Walter said.
“And
then, after a short while, I heard some noise. She was chocking and so I
rushed to the sitting room, saw an empty drugs container and instantly
knew she had done it.
“She told me
she had taken 30 pills. I made her comfortable, called the doctor,
reached out for my laptop and just googled for the remedies of
neutralising that specific analgesic’s overdose and I applied the
tactics on her.”
In the second
attempt, Janet drank some bleach and he had to again google for
directions to save her. “Even before the PPD attacked, I had learnt to
keep the doctor and the Internet close. We had a very good doctor whom I
would call at 3am and he would respond to our distress or advise us. He
attended to my wife even when I did not have the cash to pay him,” he
said.
He had learnt to not just be a husband, but a constant care giver as well. For better, or for worse.
“When
she experienced psychosis, I played along. If she called me Rihanna, I
became Rihanna. If she saw a doctor in me, I became the doctor.
Sometimes she asked me to call Walter to her side, and I would go out,
come back as Walter, and talk to her.
“Whenever
she was stable we would talk about it, laugh about it and even discuss
what would happen if she experienced the same attack the next time. With
time, it became easy for us. We just improvised coping mechanisms and I
tried my best to understand her.”
ELECTRIC THERAPY
Janet
coped well with her condition because she became open about it and did
not allow it to put her down despite having to constantly take
medication.
“She had so much
self-confidence. She was a singer, a counsellor and a wonderful mother
to our children. She was ever jovial. Let’s just say, she was flawless. I
loved everything about her,” Walter said.
On
March, 26, 2013, a few days after her doctor unsuccessfully tried to
treat her using cognitive behavioural and exposure therapy — which
involves exposing the patient to the things she fears — Janet was put on
electro-convulsive therapy (ECT).
This
form of treatment is used commonly on people with severe depression,
particularly those who are delusional and at risk of committing suicide
or murder.
It involves passing an
electric current through the brain to intentionally trigger a brief
seizure. Doctors believe the procedure causes changes in brain chemistry
that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses.
With
the support of the doctors and her husband, Janet defeated PPD, later
telling a TV interviewer that she was lucky to be among mothers who had a
caring husband and a supportive family and friends.
“Walter’s
support is priceless... you know... just legally, he is allowed to
leave,” she had said. “One can legally divorce a spouse on grounds of
unsound mind, but Walter has chosen to stay. It just shows the whole
aspect of what love is. It is big!
“The
‘in sickness and in health’ phrase has been real. He has not left at
all. I do not know what I would do without his support. It would have
been crazy.”
And now, as we talked to
Walter at his buzzing Buru Buru home, he was mourning the death of his
wife, who had died from what doctors described as “cardiopulmonary
failure due to massive pulmonary thromboembolism”. Simply put, her
heart-lung system had failed due to massive blood clots in the lungs.
“I
really miss her,” Walter told us. “She was the strongest woman I have
ever known. I have never been this lonely. She has stayed with me since
we were just friends and in high school and so I do not know any other
life without her.”
COMMON PROBLEM
According
to doctors, Post-Partum Depression occurs in non-specific people,
between the third week and twelve months after delivery.
Prof
David Ndetei of the African Mental Health Foundation says approximately
one out of every 100 women in Kenya gets PPD, which he termed as a
“major form of depression”, after delivery.
Women who have had PPD as a result of prior deliveries are 25 per cent likely to experience it again.
“Mostly,
it is caused by the rapid changes in the body. After delivery, the body
lacks its normal equilibrium. Giving birth is a major life event, just
like the loss of a mother or a loved one. People respond differently to
these events everywhere around the world,” Prof Ndetei said.
Trigger factors include a bad social circle, pre-existing mental health conditions, difficult marriages, and age.
“Young
mothers tend to be depressed more, mostly because they still are not
stable in their relationships and are not mature enough to handle small
problems; and sometimes because they simply have a feeling that they are
not good enough to be mothers,” said Prof Ndetei.
Every
mother, he said, should be closely monitored by, mostly, her husband,
close relatives and friends who knew her well before she gave birth.
“The
care giver should look out for the attitude of that mother towards the
child, how she takes care of herself, her environment, and just a
general change in her character and moods,” he said.
Sometimes
PPD goes away by simply understanding the mother, talking to her well,
helping to care for the child and simply being there for her.
His
views were supported by Dr Josephine Omondi, a Nairobi-based
psychiatrist who added that the first step to overcoming PPD is
“compassion and understanding”.
In
some cases in Kenya and around the world, mothers suffering from PPD
have committed suicide or even killed their own children. Just three
weeks ago, American Christiana Booth, 29, angered by the fact that her
children just could not keep quiet, called the Washington police and
complained that she could not calm them down.
About
ten minutes after the call, she grabbed a kitchen knife from the
dishwasher and slashed her toddler’s throat, then covered her with a
blanket so that she would be quiet. She then slit the throats of her
twin six-month-old daughters as well.
CLOSER HOME
Upon
interrogation by the police, the depressed mother said she had killed
her children to shut them up because her husband, a soldier, “gets very
annoyed” whenever they make noise.
She
also told the police that her husband never helped her with the
children, kept breaking down during the interview and vomited once.
“They will be quiet now,” she kept saying.
Closer
home, and exactly 21 days after Christian shocked the world, a similar
story unfolded at the Korogocho slums in Nairobi. Catherine Muthoni, 20,
pounced on a one-week-old child she had delivered through Caesarian
Section, killed him, slit open the tummy and ate his heart. She then
placed the remains of her son on the table before going to her friend’s
house and killing two other infants.
The
local chief said Catherine had admitted that she had killed the
children, while a neighbour we met at a nearby police post told us
Catherine did not seem shaken “and was even asking for a soda”.
WATCHFUL DADS
Although
she is yet to plead in court as she is still undergoing mental checkup,
her crime is classified under section 210 of the Penal Code as
infanticide.
The law defines
infanticide as “where a woman, by any wilful act or omission, causes the
death of her child... but at the time of the act or omission the
balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of her not having fully
recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child or by reason of
the effect of lactation consequent on the birth of the child”.
The
law adds that such a person may be punished “as if she had been guilty
of manslaughter of the child”, which explains the reason the justice
system in Kenya has been lenient to offenders.
Although
data from the Kenya Police Service hardly establishes recent incidents
of infanticide, in 2011 alone 45 cases were reported.
Post-Partum
Depression was commonly cited when civil society groups were advocating
for fathers to be given paternity leave, stating that it would be
necessary for them to watch the mothers’ behaviours more closely.
A
new study, published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry, finds that
not all women experience PPD in the same way, and that new mums with the
severest forms of the condition may actually be able to trace the
beginnings of their depression back to pregnancy itself.
These
findings are important because they can help doctors better understand
the cause of the different types of PPD and find better ways to screen,
prevent, diagnose and treat the condition.
For
now, Walter Akolo just wishes there was something, anything, he could
do to save the life of her beloved Janet, whom he believes he will “meet
soon in heaven”.
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