‘How I lost my only child to leukemia, and my husband fled’

For the founder of Timilehin Leukemia Foundation, Mrs Janet Modupe Oyedele, life, for a half of the last nine years, has been an excruciating whirl. Mrs Oyedele’s horrendous experiences in her matrimony within that period would have totally reduced some other women to worrywart skeletons. But not Mrs Oyedele. Instead, from her adversity has sprung […]

For the founder of Timilehin Leukemia Foundation, Mrs Janet Modupe Oyedele, life, for a half of the last nine years, has been an excruciating whirl.

Mrs Oyedele’s horrendous experiences in her matrimony within that period would have totally reduced some other women to worrywart skeletons. But not Mrs Oyedele. Instead, from her adversity has sprung a philosophical resolve to serve humanity, employing as a platform the very disorder that had once shattered her joy.

That strength was again underlined last Thursday in Lagos when Mrs Oyedele organised the annual sensitisation event on leukemia and a free blood donation exercise for leukemia patients.

The Oyedele home once boasted a strong bond, until sometime in December 2009 when tragedy began to creep in through their bundle of joy, Timilehin, their only son.

In December 2009, Timilehin had complained of pain on his left leg, after which he began to have bouts of malaria. His parents decided to take him to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), where he was diagnosed with anaemia.

“He took his first blood transfusion on January 4, 2010, when all his body parameters were down and he needed blood transfusion. For a while he was fine, but then relapsed. This time different series of test were carried out and doctors finally said he was suffering from leukemia,” Mrs Oyedele told Eko Trust.

Leukemia, according to Wikipedia, is a hematological (blood-related) malignancy, or simply a cancer of the blood. It develops in the bone marrow, the soft inner part of bones where new blood cells are made.

When a child has leukemia, the bone marrow produces white blood cells that do not mature correctly and the cells do not respond to the signals telling them when to stop and when to produce. Some of the symptoms are bone and joint pains, abdominal pain, vomiting, rashes and weight loss.

That was what afflicted young Timilehin, accompanied by immense discomfort. After diagnosis and subsequent chemotherapy at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife, doctors told his mother how vital it was for her son to be flown abroad for bone marrow transplant.

Before then, the parents had exhausted whatever money they had on series of diagnosis and tests. As if that wasn’t enough, at a point during the battle with leukemia, discrimination against Timilehin at the school he was attending became intense so much so that the management eventually ejected him despite protests from his mother.

Then his father delivered the killer punch. As narrated by Mrs Oyedele, Mr Oyedele apparently found the burden of taking care of his very ailing son unbearable and abandoned the poor boy and his mother.

But the woman maintained she harbours no ill-feelings towards the man. “He tried all he could as a man, but as you know in this part of the world, when a child is good, he is for the father. But when he is a problem, he becomes the burden of his mother. He actually left us because he could not cope, and I don’t blame him for that,” she said.

Deserted to bear the cross alone, Mrs Oyedele didn’t buckle under it. Rather, as a mother, her love for her child grew stronger in his agonising moments.

As advised by doctors, she sought for funds “everywhere” and was able to take Timilehin to a hospital abroad where he was on admission for a month. The boy appeared to have survived the ailment, so mother and son returned home.

However, when it seemed victory had been achieved, an unusual negative relapse occurred, sparking a fresh round of treatment. This time, Timilehin succumbed. On December 25, 2014, at 3.30am, in his mother’s arms at home, he mumbled to her, “Keep up the good work. God will take care of you. Thanks for taking care of me,” and quietly departed this world.

A devastated Mrs Oyedele would allow the tragedy to weigh her down for only a few months. From the adversity has emerged a strength she never knew she possessed: a desire to serve humanity. Rather than allow Timilehin’s death to sentence her to permanent bouts of depression, she decided to establish the Timilehin Leukemia Foundation to promote assistance for children suffering from the monster that is the cancer in their blood.

She said that her experience exposed her to the knowledge that there are actually thousands of children in the grip of leukemia. She added it has become imperative for her to enlighten the populace on how important it is for family members to display effusive love and affection to victims, as this, to her, is the first and most efficient healing process before any medical administration of drugs and other related things.

“A victim’s mind must be in the right state and in synchronization with their loved ones for a spontaneous healing process,” she said.

Mrs Oyedele pleaded with governments at all levels in Nigeria to put in more efforts into tackling the leukemia scourge to save lives, and to understand the plight of parents whose children are down at any point in time with the disease.

“Many parents lose their jobs in the course of staying in hospitals with their children who have leukemia. It can be time-consuming. Government should help workers facing this problem to secure their jobs instead of taking jobs away from them. Government can look into how other countries are making progress along that line.

“Advanced countries don’t have scarcity of blood. In Nigeria, the facilities to fight leukemia are not just there. There aren’t many experts in that field. The laboratories to do the required tests are not available, while the crowds requiring medical attention on leukemia are growing everyday,” she said.

The Timilehin Leukemia Foundation has set out to create awareness about leukemia and assist patients, especially, children in various ways, give support to families going through the experience, work with relevant bodies to have research centres, well-equipped laboratories and blood banks which patients can easily access at affordable rates, grant scholarships to medical students abroad who will love to specialize in this field and influence government health schemes or policies to treat cancer patients at little or no cost.

Mrs Oyedele said the Foundation has been organising voluntary blood donation exercise and ensuring the blood is available for children battling with leukemia. She added it has been providing for the medical treatment of 10 leukemia patients annually.

She solicits for financial aid from individuals, corporate organisations, religious bodies and governments to achieve her goals.