Living past the trauma of being stabbed

Mary Ng’ethe was stabbed in the head 17 times by robbers – but she survived. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Mary Ng’ethe was stabbed in the head 17 times by robbers – but she survived.
  • The resulting post-trauma disorder she suffered has turned her into an activist for mental health awareness.

 

It was the eve of Valentine’s Day, 2014, a Thursday. Mary Karau Ng’ethe – 52 at the time and the personal assistant to a university Vice Chancellor – was at her desk at work. She was readying herself for retirement after 25 years of employment. “My boss wanted me to renew my contract but I told her no,” Mary recalls. “I’d had the contract for a month but I didn’t sign it.” That Thursday – on a whim, at 2.30pm – she did: “I was signing it to get medical insurance cover.”

Later that evening, at her home in Muthithi Road, Westlands, Mary felt spooked and she didn’t understand why. Other than the house help, a caretaker and her niece, there was no one else in the house. “My husband was away for a chama meeting. I didn’t expect him home,” she says. Being alone heightened her fright. At 11pm, she called it a night and went upstairs to her bedroom. She was unable to sleep though, so she sat up in bed and prayed the Rosary. She startled awake at 3am. “The house-help opened the gate for my husband. I sat with him in the living room as he ate some chapati before he went upstairs to sleep. I stayed down to have some leftover liver from dinner. It suddenly started raining very hard.”

Mary turned around to join her husband upstairs when she saw the main door slowly swing open. “A man stepped into the house.  He was wearing a black kabuti and cap. He carried an axe.”

Mary’s screams stuck in her throat. She ran past him and up the stairs. “My knees gave in at the landing. He came up and stood in front of me. I noticed there were two other men. I looked up and saw he had raised the axe high up. It came down on me very hard, right here in the middle of my head.” He struck her again. And again. And again. And again. A total of 17 times, the doctors would later tell her. 

Mary’s blood gushed out of her head in torrents, soaking into the cream nightdress she had on. “I had to save myself. I looked up at my attacker, raised my hands and confidently quoted Luke chapter 10 verse 18.” Her loud voice stopped him and woke her husband. He came out of their bedroom – confused, sleepy – to the sight of his wife lying in a pool of blood, three men around her. Everyone presumed her dead.

What happened next is a blur to Mary: She recalls getting up and tying a towel around her head to stop the bleeding. She recalls her niece coming upstairs and calling for help from Mary’s phone, and the attackers scampering off into the darkness. She recalls her husband getting into the backseat of their neighbour’s car to take her to Aga Khan Hospital. “I kept talking and punching him. Being active kept me alive.”

LIVING WITH PTSD

Mary lost consciousness at the hospital when she saw the doctors and nurses around her gurney. She went into a nine-hour surgery. Her 13 brothers and sisters, and her three children prayed in the waiting room all through.

She received therapy for the week she was in hospital. “The doctors discharged me to go live in my brother’s house in Westlands. He’s a doctor. I was their patient for six months.” She moved out at end of 2014 and into an on-campus university staff house because she was too traumatised to go back to her house. At the time, neither she nor her family knew she was on the fast track to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): “I used to cry all the time and I couldn’t sleep at night. I had to have someone with me, sometimes even in my bed, for me to close my eyes. Sometimes I’d stay up with my house-help until morning.

 “I left my husband in Westlands. We now had two homes. He used to come and see me in the campus. I’d go to my house in Westlands during the day then drive back to the campus in the evening. I asked him to sell the house or rent it out but he refused. My husband could not understand my trauma. It brought marital issues. I could never go to his home upcountry because I felt judged.”

This went on into the next year. Mary felt like she was going mad. “My family runs a real estate business. In September 2015, they sent me to New Jersey to set up a diaspora office. The first night I was there was the first time I slept.”

Mary returned to Kenya a month later. Everyone seemed to have carried on with their lives. Going back to her old normal life made her family believe she had healed – what nobody knew was that the physical wounds were healing but the emotional and mental wounds were becoming septic. Not knowing it was PTSD compounded it further. Mary took to drinking brandy to numb her pain.

The straw that broke Mary’s back came in March 2016, when her house-help left. Mary cried like never before – she was alone and terrified. She was desperate for healing. “I called one of my sisters and asked her to pick me up from my house immediately. She took me to a psychologist at the Nairobi Hospital the next day.”

The psychologist put her on a cocktail of drugs. He also put her on weekly therapy sessions. Underpinning this management programme was the undeniable love Mary received from her family. “They saved me, they supported me beyond measure. I don’t know how to thank them.

“I was off the drugs the drugs in six months, therapy became quarterly. I moved back home. I am a new Mary. I give motivational talks and create awareness of the stigma that comes with PTSD. I’m actively involved in two non-profits that work with women and children. I’m living a fulfilled life. I’ve found intrinsic happiness.”