Episode 3: The Sickness That Almost Broke Me
Final year in UNN came with its own kind of madness. If you weren’t battling departmental project delays, you were fighting to meet up with fees, feeding, or chasing your lecturers for signatures. But I didn’t expect the biggest battle to come from my own body.
It started with fatigue.
At first, I thought it was just stress. I had tutorials every weekend, lectures during the week, and was helping a friend run her mother’s provisions shop part-time for some extra cash. But then the fatigue became weakness. I started sleeping through classes, my appetite disappeared, and no matter how much I rested, my body felt like it was wading through cement.
One Friday morning, during a 2-hour lecture on research methodology, I fainted.
I woke up at the campus medical center with my shoes off and my head throbbing. A nurse was fanning me, and two classmates stood by the bed looking terrified.
The diagnosis? Severe anemia and early signs of ulcer. My body was breaking down from months of skipping meals, taking cheap roadside snacks, and working myself beyond my limits. The doctor asked when I last had a proper meal. I couldn’t answer.
As I lay there, it hit me hard—I had taken care of everyone else but forgotten myself. In chasing tuition, helping my mother, running tutorials, and working part-time, I had let my own health rot quietly in the background.
Worse still, I didn’t have NHIS And the hospital bills, medications, and strict new diet they recommended were far beyond what I could afford.
The total estimate was ₦32,000. I had only ₦5,000 saved.
That night, I sat in the corner of the hostel, watching the night sky and swallowing tears. For the first time, I felt like giving up. Not on life, but on the struggle. Was it worth it to hustle this hard and still fall apart?
But something wouldn’t let me quit.
I reached out to my former JAMB tutorial students—the few who had gained admission and were now in 100 level. I told them I was unwell. Two of them sent me ₦2,000 each. It didn’t solve everything, but it reminded me that I had made an impact—and sometimes, impact gives back.
Then I made a difficult decision: I sold my laptop.
It was an old HP Pavilion I’d used since 200 level. It had seen better days, but it was still functional. I sold it for ₦25,000 to a fellow final year student who needed it for project typing. It felt like amputating a part of my hustle—but I needed to survive first before I could hustle again.
With the money, I got my meds, bought fruits and multivitamins, and started eating better. Chinwe—my ever-loyal friend—offered to share her gas stove and foodstuff with me. For the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to be helped.
In those quiet weeks of recovery, I reflected deeply.
I realized that health and wellness aren’t luxuries—they’re investments. You can’t pour from an empty cup. No dream, ambition, or struggle is worth your life. I started paying attention to my body, drinking more water, avoiding roadside snacks, and sticking to a meal plan that worked with my tight budget. I learned to cook simple but nutritious meals: beans, eggs, pap, groundnuts, rice with vegetables.
I also started sharing what I learned—especially with other female students who, like me, were juggling too much.
I was healing, and somehow, helping others heal too.
That was when something unexpected happened. Mr. Ogugua, the lecturer who had earlier mentored me, invited me to speak briefly at a community outreach his department was organizing on student wellness and financial literacy.
It was a small crowd—mostly 100 to 300 level students—but I spoke from the heart. I told them about collapsing in class, selling my laptop, learning the hard way that a tired body is a ticking time bomb.
After the event, a woman approached me. She was in her late 30s, and had sat quietly at the back of the room. She introduced herself as a representative from a local NGO that ran health and empowerment programs for youth in Nsukka and Enugu. She said she was impressed by my passion and experience.
“Would you be interested in helping us run a small youth wellness initiative on campus?” she asked.
I blinked. “You mean… like a job?”
“More like a stipend-based volunteer role, but yes. We pay ₦25,000 monthly and cover basic transport and airtime. You’ll host wellness talks, share resources, and mentor others.”
It wasn’t millions, but to me, it was gold. I said yes before she finished talking.
That role changed everything.
I was still hustling, still uncertain about post-graduation life, but now I was healthier, earning something small, and doing what I loved—teaching, mentoring, and making wellness a conversation, not a luxury.
To be continued in Episode 4: “Graduate With No Guarantee”
