Lying in the middle of some innocuous Buru Buru road with a broken leg bone popping out of the raptured jeans and a dangling heel bone with blood oozing out forcefully like water from a burst pipe might seem like an unlikely place for an epiphany.
But that’s what happened to 25-year-old Lorraine Moraa as she looked down, albeit not in shock, to see her mangled right leg on May 15, 2018.
“It was around 6pm. I was on a boda-boda bike heading home. We were trying to avoid this drunk driver who kept leaning towards our side. Somehow, I panicked and jumped off the bike. The intoxicated driver hit me and took off. The boda boda guy went after him and I was left lying in the middle of the road with a broken, popped-out tibia and some of its fragments falling by the side. I couldn’t feel my leg, I couldn’t move, I didn’t feel any pain, and I wasn’t shocked at all,” narrates Ms Moraa with a goofy smile.
Passersby gathered around, just staring with freaking faces, with no one seemingly wanting to help until another familiar boda boda rider arrived at the scene.
“He picked me up and, for fear of what might happen, dumped me at the gates of Mama Lucy Hospital (on Kagundo Road) and asked the guards to assist me in getting some medical attention. All this time, about 30 minutes after the accident, I had been calling my family, and no one was picking up until later on when my brother did,” says Ms Moraa.
This series of events marked a long journey of comeback to a healing process that is still ongoing. It has been daunting.
Staring through her clear glasses with a conscious glance and wearing her permanent goofy smile, she takes stock of how far she has come and how much further she can go.
If anything, she doesn’t think luck has been involved in her journey to recovery and conversion to an adherent cyclist.
From escaping death, surviving days in the high-dependency unit, getting away with a doctor’s recommendation to have her leg amputated, embracing pain, falling into depression and falling in love with cycling, what more can she wish for?
“Breaking my tibia was the reason that made me fall in love with cycling. The doctors ruled me out of ever walking on my twos again. I was to be bound to a wheelchair and crutches for life. It might be funny to say that I’m not quite yet fully recovered but have already done three hikes and cycled over 20 kilometres,” she says.
The tibia is the main bone of the lower leg, forming what is more commonly known as the shin that dictates how one stands, moves and keeps balance.
When her brother arrived at Mama Lucy Hospital, Ms Moraa was starting to feel unconscious after losing a lot of blood.
“He was sceptical I could be treated there, so he had my leg wrapped between some wood and rushed me to Aga Khan Hospital. At this point, I was feeling dizzy, almost unconscious and just wanted to sleep, but they kept slapping me inside the ambulance as a distraction for me not to fall asleep because chances are that if I did, then I would have died in my sleep that day. By staying awake, you are giving your body a chance to fight,” she says.
Lorraine Moraa cycles at Buru Buru Phase 2 in Nairobi on December 8, 2023. PHOTO | BONFACE BOGITA | NMG
At Aga Khan, Ms Moraa was taken to the theatre, but the doctors could not do much other than clean it because she had lost a lot of blood. The family, who are staunch Seventh-Day Adventists, turned down a suggestion to have a blood transfusion to facilitate the urgent surgery.
“So I was moved back to the ward and put on beetroot fruits and liver to replenish my blood volume. When I was ready, the surgeon twice recommended amputating the leg when the bone refused to go back into its original state. Or if not, he gave me the option of being bound in a wheelchair for the rest of my life,” she says.
None of those options made sense to the family. They urged the doctor to find another alternative. “Apparently, according to the doctor, it was relatively cheaper to have my leg amputated than have a steel rod inserted inside the tibia. The metal alone cost around Sh300,000. After the surgery, I was at the hospital for two months. By the time I was leaving the bill stood at Sh2.5 million,” says Ms Moraa.
Walking around it’s not easily noticeable how slightly her right leg drags behind. Several rounds of surgery were needed to repair the damage and get her here.
Two months ago, she had another date with the theatre to remove the metal, bringing the number of surgeries on that same leg to 10.
Aga Khan performed four of those surgeries and a couple more at Eldoret Hospital, where she had skin grafting procedures to conceal the wound.
“They had to cut part of my skin from my thighs and patch the scar because my leg skin was too soft,” she says.
Ms Moraa is resilient. Yet it’s hardly surprising that there were moments in the past six years that she thought about giving up.
“What I physically had to go through for the injury itself, then mentally. That feeling of being a liability, a burden to people, weighed me down. I hated when people always felt sorry for me. Imagine being indoors for an entire year. It used to eat me up that I was missing out. I’m a party animal I can no longer go for ‘dunda’ or other social events”.
The situation was so dire that she had to cut out everybody and even, at some point, contemplated abusing drugs just to get by her trauma.
“That’s how bad it was. I found myself in depression. I lost my best friend because she didn’t know how to handle me. I had become irritable.
“People don’t see and understand. I didn’t. I can say the same thing. Now when I see people with injuries I understand what they are going through,” she says.
The situation pushed Ms Moraa to want to prove a point to the world and herself. “After the injuries, I was advised not to walk, but I tried to walk. Then I was told if I was to walk, I had to use two crutches instead of one. Of course, initially, I had to use the wheelchair, but I grew tired pushing it around, I wanted to get back to using my feet,” says Ms Moraa.
With a year gone, now residing in Eldoret, one day, Ms Moraa’s gaze met a lonely bike in a yard belonging to a relative. Her curiosity took over her.
“I had seen videos of physios abroad using bicycles on patients and I gambled. When I tried to pedal, I realised I could cycle easily than walk. That’s how I started moving around while still injured. I preferred the bicycle to walking and I guess that’s how I fell in love with cycling to date,” says Ms Moraa.
Lorraine Moraa during the interview at Buru Buru Estate in Nairobi on December 8, 2023. PHOTO | BONFACE BOGITA | NMG
This attempt only made her want to risk more. She heard of a church hike to Ndalat Hills and enrolled.
“I decided I would go with one crutch, but in the morning, I chose not to go with any of them. I took two hours to get up, Ndalat is more similar to Ngong Hills. Coming down was the scary part because the dead leg started vibrating. They had to find me a stick, and eventually, I completed the hike,” says Moraa.
A lot of pain followed due to the stress. She was unable to cycle.
“I didn’t tell anyone the pain I was going through because I didn’t want anybody’s sympathy and empathy. On my next clinic visit, the doctor asked if I had been moving on steep areas. I said my bedroom is upstairs. He then said I should keep it hat because it was speeding up healing,” she says, adding that she has, so far, climbed Mount Kenya and several hills in Kisii and joined a cycling club—Critical Mass.
“We meet every Saturday and cycle for between 28 to 40 kilometres. I am now addicted. With the rod now out, I plan to do even more, but for now, I will need to let the fresh surgery heal first.
