Bebe Cool calls for Kayla’s support as family seeks 185m for specialized treatment in India
Singer Bebe Cool has called on the general public to come and in big numbers and give Kayla Reeza Ruvuuza a deserved second chance to life on 23rd at Naguru Hill for her birthday fundraiser. Kayla and two friends locked themselves in the car and suffocated.
In the process, the 3 year old suffered Brian hypoxia and she needs UGX 185m to go to India for treatment. The family has organized a fundraising drive to raise the money on 23rd July 2017 at Naguru Hill and it will be her 3rd birthday. Bebe Cool together with his family visited Kayla and this is what he posted after on his social media wall.
“Me, my wife and my daughter took some time yesterday and went to visit this family after i came across this story on FB.
Only God knows why this happened to this 3 year old girl but I asked the mother to KAYLA REEZA RUVUZA to allow me be part of her life.
Please read this story and tell me if it doesn’t change the way you look at life (Kayla’s mother story)
Here is my sad story. Please read through. Today it’s my baby, tomorrow it could be another. If possible share the story with friends. You never know whose life you might save.
It’s Thursday night, time check 3am and my six months old still won’t sleep. I start to pray the 3 o’clock prayer as I wait for her to sleep. Lucky enough at 4 she dosed off and I finally got some sleep. At 5am, hubby’s alarm went off and up she was again and this time she didn’t sleep again till 8am. My older daughter (almost 3yrs now) got up jolly as usual calling me so hard that I couldn’t sleep again. So I was forced to begin my day with heavy eyes. I made her breakfast and fed her since her appetite was down. Watched her favorite cartoon with her till midday when I gave her midmorning snack. Her playmates (who are the gate man’s daughters) came in and since I now saw that she had company and the maid was watching them, I went with the smaller baby to try and get her to sleep so that I could nap by 1pm, we were both fast asleep. I was awoken by a phone call at about 2.30. I didn’t pick the call but it sure did awake me. I went and took a shower and put on some clothes but I noticed that I wasn’t hearing the voices of the three girls I left playing in the living room. At first I thought my daughter was asleep but still decided to call the maid and ask where the kids were. She just said, “nabagulidewo nebagenda kuzanya” (I opened for them and they went to play) my heart started to beat first like I knew something was wrong. I rushed out of the house to see where they had gone. Coz it’s very unusual for my daughter to play quietly. She will atleast be fighting for a toy or laughing so loud or crying. I rushed around the compound to look for my baby but she was nowhere to be found. I run to the gate man’s house and called him to ask where his kids were since I had last seen them with mine. He had no idea either. He came out and we searched and called so loudly all of the kids’ names hoping that at least one would hear and come back. We searched the neighbourhood but nothing. In my heart I knew they had been kidnapped. I didn’t even know what to do now, my heart was pumping so fast, I was shaking in the knees. So as we stood in our compound, completely out of options now thinking of going to make a police report, am looking at an ipsum car in the corner of the compound with tinted glasses I see the head of the one of the kids popping out from the boot area of the car. I screamed,” one of the kids is here!!!” We rushed to open the doors but they were all locked. I could see my daughter lying in the back seat not moving an inch. When I thinking of getting a huge stone to hit the window and get them out, the gate man found the boot door open. Two of the kids completely passed out and one slightly conscious lay there in the car. My brain froze for a minute. The conscious girl managed to tell us who got them into the car, a certain boy from the neighbourhood. I rushed though the boot to the back seat where my daughter lay face down into the chair. I started screaming as I pulled her out. I called for water and started to pour all over her. There was no motion. I could hardly feel a breath come out of her. I then just knew that I had to get her to the nearest clinic. I just put her in the back seat of my car I called to the gate man to bring his children (who were by now vomiting all over him)to the car as well. I was driving like a mad woman screaming at the top of my voice,” save my child Jesus save my child”. The first clinic we branched to, they could handle only the other 2 kids, but they said that I needed to rush my daughter to the nearest big hospital because the condition was too critical. The doctor emphasised that I needed to go as fast as possible. The speed I used from then I don’t even know. I was going so fast but the gate man (who now offered to carry for me my daughter leaving his behind on first aid) kept screaming,”mama kayla yanguwaaa. Laba amaso gagendaaa!!!” I went even faster with double indicators, hooting continuously and passing thru the wrong sides of the roundabout, overtaking all the cars on the road. I only had one thought in my head to reach Life Link in Namugongo. How I was to get there , I didn’t care. I just had reach. Finally, we arrived, I rushed in screaming, heeelp my baby is dying. And all the nurses rushed to grab her and rush her to the emergency room. This is the only time I managed to cry as I told them what had happened.
They tried to push oxygen in but nothing was changing. Her oxygen level was now 30(normal range is 100) they realised later that her lungs were full of I think all kinds of fluids and no oxygen was going in. I knelt by her bed holding her hand still chanting,”save her Jesus, save her” as the doctors struggled to keep her alive. They brought a machine to suck out what had gone into the lungs and then they asked me to step out. I swear, there are moments when I lost hope and started to kind of prepare myself for whatever the outcome would be. I just stood outside the ER pacing up and down. Like the way they do it in the movies ( now I get it.)Peeping through the curtains to see if I could read any expression from the doctors faces. Non of them looked hopeful. It looked like they were struggling so much in there. I could see my little girl shaking so vigorously. About an hour later, a doctor came out to talk to me. My brain froze, I didn’t know what she was going to tell me but I was trying to read her face, I just told her amidst tears, please tell me my baby is OK. .. ” and she just smiled and said, “we hope for the best, keep praying” she then went on to tell me that we needed to go to a hospital with a life support machine since they didn’t have one and that they had called an ambulance to ferry us to the nearest ICU
Soon the ambulance arrived but we had to wait another 30mins because the condition was too critical and was still unstable. they needed to get her to a point where she could survive for 20 more minutes, enough time to reach the next hospital. They then took us to kadic bukoto since it was the nearest icu to kyaliwajala. During the 15 minutes we took to reach bukoto is when I realised the importance of letting an ambulance pass by when it’s behind you. There are people who would intentionally refuse to let us pass. I remember a particular woman in her silver mini pajero who quarreled that we were trying to bypass her when she finally let us pass. It’s really painful to see how heartless people can be.
Anyways, we reached kadic and my little girl was pushed into the icu and the door was closed. The next time I saw her, she was hooked to so many wires and tubes. It was such a horrible sight. Machines were beeping but I had no idea what the readings meant. But whenever I would ask the doctor about the status, they would just say, don’t stop praying. And hope for the best. Close relatives started to flock in. So supportive and trying to assure me that all would be well. Whenever a doctor or nurse would pass by we would ask if there was any change and they would keep telling us the same thing. Don’t stop praying. So I would send messages to all my friends to pray even harder. At that point, I found it even hard to pray. I was in so much denial that for most of the time I was jazzing everyone like there was nothing wrong. Every one said u was strong. I wasn’t, I just didn’t believe that my own Michaela was the one lying on that bed. It was even hard for me to call her by her name. Coz in my heart I knew none of this was happening.
For 4days, she was in coma and the doctors kept wondering why she wasn’t waking up yet the ct scan we did on day 2 showed that the brain appeared normal. They decided to do a second ct scan. I remember the day we received the results. It was midnight and I read through, they were big words so I googled. As I searched them one by one, my brain froze. I rushed to look for a doctor to explain them to me. Hoping she would say something different from what I had read but no. It was true my little girl had suffered a hypoxic brain damage in the part responsible for vision and movement. so there was a possibility of blindness. I cried so hard I don’t even remember ever crying like that. The pain I had in my heart, u don’t wish on your worst enemy. my husband couldn’t even leave me at the hospital that night. We sat together at the door of the icu through the night.
Days passed and slowly by slowly she started to move to move her fingers. Each day she was doing something new. what I learned about this condition is that u have to celebrate even the tiniest change. So the day she kept her eyes open for 30mins, the day she put her tongue out, the day she cried for the first time, the day she moved her whole arm, all these were very exciting moments. Slowly by slowly, the doctors started to reduce how much oxygen they were pushing in her. Till about 10days later, they took it off completely because she could now breathe on her own. This was by far the biggest achievement. All this time she was staying awake for longer but we realised that indeed she could not see. I couldn’t believe my little girl was now blind. We were not sure whether she could hear us either but we kept talking to her and playing her favourite cartoons. Soon we left intensive care because they determined that her level of consciousness had improved. We were seeing apparently the best neurologist for children. He always sounded optimistic about her condition.
Weeks later, we were discharged from the hospital. All her medicine was oral so since she was still feeding through a tube going through her nose to the stomach, it was easy for us to manage her from home. we would just go to change the tube. And for review. What we learned is that at this point, it was as if we had just given birth to a new born child. We had to train her everything from scratch. There is nothing she could do on her own. Can’t see, Can’t sit, can’t hold her neck up, can’t eat, talk or anything. We had to hold her for most of the day. We started physiotherapy in the hopes that one day, she will snap out of this and we will have our once cheerful playful life of the party girl back to normal again. I have not met anyone who passed through the same story. Most people who talk about kids that were locked in cars name the ones that died.
In this short period, I have learnt one thing, ignorance is very expensive. If the kid that locked the boot door knew how dangerous it was to do so, maybe things would be different today. We got over 150visitors at the clinic, but more than half of them had never heard of something like this. Most had no idea how dangerous a car can be. Most were in shock recalling how many times they left their kids in the car to enter a shopping mall. Some even telling you how some kids died in such incidents. Personally, I had only ever heard of one incident in the USA.
It’s a painful story to tell but I kept telling myself that if speaking out could save even one life, it would be worth it. God is our sole protector but we have to put some effort as well. Let’s educate the maids at home and the gate men. Let’s be keen and watchful and keen on where the kids are. You can never be too careful when protecting kids. There are times when I want to beat myself up for taking a nap and leaving the maid in charge. But then I realise it could have been worse if I hadn’t become to sleepy to go to work. Coz I never miss work. May God protect our children.
In the mean time, Michaela needs all the prayer that she can get that the good Lord may restore all her senses and make her normal again. Please always have her in your prayers. Thank you. 23rd July at Naguru Hill.
Click here to check Kayla’s status https://www.facebook.com/maggie.pal/videos/1241076532688198/