September 2009, Nkoli begins her six year journey at the lagoon secondary school which ended up being a prophecy fulfilment ground. In lagoon the prophecy of her parents and siblings would finally find fulfilment and Nkoli would by her graduation from lagoon also have gotten an experiential medical degree in diverse fields of medicine.Prophecy? Medical degree?, how ?
Let's rewind a bit so you can understand the prophecy drift.
Remember how Nkoli was barely standing by her first birthday yeah? Well turns out it went on to affect how she walked when she eventually did. She didn't have the normal level of stamina necessary to walk properly. Skip to primary one and darling girl is hit with another diagnosis eye problem. Hello!!! Glasses. The eye problem coupled with the walking thing gave rise to new means of taunting and ridicule both at home and in school, from family, friends and clueless strangers. Statements like four eyes, bendy bendy and freak became more or less a form of greeting and identification for Nkoli . It got to the point that her siblings didn't want to go out with her and her younger ones didn't want her to meet their friends because she's an 'embarrassment' when you have many sisters with similar names then when discussions came up with friends including any or all of you , you had to find a way to help them understand which sister you were referring to when she finds herself in such a situation she describes Adaeze as the first born, Adora as the beautiful one but she somehow was always described as the one with four eyes that walked funny by all my reputation as bendy bendy 1 of Ezeh house many times preceded her as strangers easily identified her at first sight. So on to the first prophecy: 'if you like don't walk well when you get to lagoon they would use it to describe you'. As true as anything could be her posture was used to taunt her in lagoon by misinformed human creatures.
In Jss1 Nkoli began experiencing terrible almost unbearable knee pains but didn't tell her parents for fear of condemnation or fear of something being medically wrong with her again so she came up with her own management scheme; westlife songs and biting her arm whenever the pain in her knee became too bad. However this scheme only worked for so long till the pain hit her during a Sunday service and her knee locked she couldn't move, with hot salty tears streaming down her face she asks for her mother and focuses on biting her arm in a desperate bid to reduce her pain. Mother comes and after about an hour of praying, shouting, doubting, massaging and what know her knees literally unlock and she's taken to the hospital where she was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis. After that episode at church more people saw her as broken and pitied her parents who had to deal with an ever evolving sick Nkoli. Unbearable knee pain and another avenue for more ridicule as her walking got funnier and she had to use a knee support on her left knee but she kept going by the end of Jss1 she's grateful that she had yet had an episode in school. Summer break that year was however hell Nkoli was almost always in pain it seemed the arthritis was getting worse as her pain increased and her medication had to be changed to tramadol which ended up being the devils gift.
Tramadol killed her knee pain but made her sick some days to the point that she threw up blood another trip to the hospital another diagnosis this time it was bleeding ulcer apparently induced by the excessive use of pain killers for her knees. Oh well it couldn't get any worse now could it. It really did get worse not long after.
In Jss 2 her knees took on a mind of their own aching, locking and vibrating at will it really didn't matter to them where she was they even defied the hold of the knee support. The funny thing was that these knee episodes happened like a scene straight out of a Nigerian movie. she missed nine out of twelve school weeks in jss2 first term on account of knee pains. Initially when she started missing so much school her parents thought she was just being dramatic and using her knee as an excuse to miss school or how else would she explain her knees locking and hurting to the point of tears only in the early hours of the morning. How else could she explain her early morning paralysis. As much as it broke her heart that they thought she was faking her pain and using it as a ploy for attention she understood their frustration. Thankfully on one of her hospital visits this magical morning syndrome her leg was putting up was medically explained as a varying of arthritis. Hallelujah!!! now that they believed her we found a new way to manage the situation. She made it through junior secondary school amidst all the medical, academic and emotional drama. So by the end of junior secondary school she was Nkoli Ndidi Ezeh, the broken, four eyed, squinted, miss bendy bendy, family embarrassment with chronic juvenile arthritis. Which simply meant she had zero social life but for her temporary imaginary friends who were later drowned by the voices in her head. How did she cope with the pain?
Jesus, westlife, and biting her arm. she survived secondary and graduated from lagoon in July 2015.
Once a suicidal, always a suicidal?