This woman is a real-life walking Christmas miracle after rising from her death bed and getting back on her feet.
On Wednesday, after a three-month stay, Lizeka “Pinkie” Ndlamhlaba, 49, was finally discharged from Tygerberg Hospital.
The Khayelitsha woman has been in and out of hospital since 1996 after giving birth to her first-born.
At the time, she was diagnosed with a kidney condition, but unaware of the severity, she continued her studies in Electrical Engineering in the Eastern Cape and then worked full-time.
In 2016, she fell ill and was admitted to hospital where she was put on peritoneal dialysis – a treatment for kidney failure that uses the lining of the abdomen, or belly, to filter blood inside the body.
The mom of two, who has battled with her health for the past seven years and thought it was tickets for her in September, said: “I got an infection and came back to Tygerberg in July. I spent three months in and out of Tygerberg hospital and was placed on another dialysis.
“I got sick again in September with a severe stomach pain and was told that I have a stoma and had to undergo a six-hour operation.”
Dr Thabiet Jardine, Nephrology Fellow at Tygerberg, said Pinkie was diagnosed with EPS (encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis) – a rare complication of long-term peritoneal dialysis.
“She was really sick ... and developed a catastrophic complication of being on dialysis for many years,” Dr Jardine said.
“She came in with lots of abdominal pain, severely weak, severely malnourished with infections requiring antibiotics, she required surgery to unobstruct the bowel.
“She needed pipes in the abdomen because then there were collections of essentially puss in the abdomen. At many stages during this admission, her clinical condition was such that we thought she would not live to see the end of the admission.”
Pinkie said: “My family was called to decide if I should die at home or in hospital.”
But Pinkie was not about to give up, and Dr Jardine said: “Against the odds, she improved and managed to recover to a reasonably functional state at this point in time.
“I have to balance that EPS is a chronic condition, it is not something that goes away and the risk it imposes on her remains real and ongoing.”
Pinkie learnt how to walk again and said she is looking forward to spending Christmas with her family and grandchild.
She’s also “very happy to be alive” as her family depends on her disability grant, which would have been suspended in the event of her death.
”Doctors said it was a miracle of God and my ancestors who healed me and I don’t have any pain. I am happy to go back home.”
marsha.dean@inl.co.za