Norman Magaya was the brave face behind the highly contested 2017 polls, pitting the National Super Alliance (NASA) against President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party.
Magaya steered NASA campaigns with a lot of courage and preciseness but it is not until he suffered a heart attack that his image in the political scene started fading away.
In October 2017, Magaya would encounter his first brush with death as he suffered a heart attack at 1 am while holding his then newborn.
It was a real scare, but it wouldn’t be the last.
“In fact, I literally threw her (baby) in bed. My body was wet with sweat, and it looked like I had been rained on. I was struggling with shortness of breath. I tried to reach out for water, but collapsed,” he recalled in interview with the Standard.
He was quickly rushed to the hospital and on the way, he suffered two more heart attacks and had to be booked to the ICU until early morning when he came to.
He weighed 115kgs at the time and doctors immediately put him on a restricted diet as they verified if or not he had a blood clot following the heart attack.
Luckily for him, there was no clot but he suffered yet another bout of heart attack at the end of October, the same month that he had his first encounter.
Magaya who doubles up as a law lecturer had visited his farm in Kangundo during the day. At 8 pm, he suffered another heart attack and was quickly rushed to hospital.
“It was a vicious one. I placed my hand on the chest but I could not feel any heartbeat,” he recounts saying he was diagnosed with coronary heart disease thereafter.
He flew to India where a team of 15 cardiologists examined him for hours and made independent diagnosis.
Apparently, his heart ailment was severe as blood vessels were rotting which caused a clot at the junction of his two arteries. He underwent an intense heart operation where the clots were removed and blood vessels repaired to avoid further rotting.
He would be discharged in November 2017 and in 2020, he suffered a massive heart attack and later diagnosed with atrial fibrillation which causes stroke or heart failure.
Magaya’s speech was altered and slow, couldn’t breathe properly and passed urine every 20 seconds. He was put on life support.
Magaya describes this as his worst experience with heart attack but thanks God he is still alive.
He has been on medication to control his blood pressure and anxiety, drugs whose side effects have affected him in a big way.