At 31, his kidneys are failing faster than his family can afford to fight. Help him reach the transplant that dialysis alone cannot give him.
There is a drawer in Owerri holding more than fifty hospital receipts, and the woman who keeps them is tired of counting. In a video recorded to explain the family’s situation, Stanley’s sister held some of them up to the camera and said what amounted to this: “these are only the ones we could find. There were more before these. We have spent millions already, just keeping him alive long enough to get here.” She wasn’t exaggerating for effect. She was doing the thing people do when they’ve run out of other ways to say we need help and no one is listening yet.
The man those receipts belong to is Stanley Ikechukwu Oparah. He is 31 years old.
Two years ago, high blood pressure was something he managed quietly, the way people do when a condition hasn’t yet decided to announce itself. Then it did. His legs swelled until standing became difficult. His body grew weak in ways rest couldn’t touch. He began having seizures, the kind that take a person somewhere else for a while and hand them back changed. And he started losing pieces of his memory, small at first, then not so small. Imagine that for a moment. Imagine not being fully sure, some days, of things you knew yesterday. That is where Stanley has been living.
By the time doctors in Owerri examined him properly, his kidneys were already deep into damage that doesn’t reverse on its own. He was placed on dialysis through a line in his groin because his veins elsewhere couldn’t take it anymore, and he has needed blood transfusions just to keep his blood chemistry from turning dangerous. In May, his doctor referred him onward to the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, because Owerri could keep him stable but could not give him what he actually needs, which is a transplant.
Read also: Doctor Advocates Prompt Report Of Organ-Failure Patients
Dialysis is not treatment in the way that word usually means. It is survival, borrowed a few days at a time. It does not fix anything as much. It just keeps the door open a little longer, and every session it takes to keep that door open is money the family does not have and cannot keep finding.
Stanley has no parents left to call in a moment like this. His mother and father are both gone. So it has fallen to the people closest to him, his uncle, his younger sister, and his younger brother, to carry this. They have put it in writing, formally, that they support this appeal and that Stanley has no means of his own to pay for what he needs. That letter exists because they wanted to be honest with anyone who might help: this is real, this is us asking on his behalf, and we have nothing left to give but our word.
We are not asking anyone to fix this alone. Five thousand naira gets him to his next hospital visit. Fifty thousand covers a dialysis session while the family works toward the transplant itself. Anything larger moves that transplant from a hope to something closer to a plan. Whatever you can give, it goes to him directly, nowhere else, and the family has said they will show receipts and updates to anyone who asks, because they would rather be questioned than doubted quietly.
If giving isn’t possible right now, sharing this might be enough. Somebody, somewhere, may only see Stanley’s name because you passed it along.
To Donate
Account Name: Opara Chinasa Malvis (Stanley’s younger sister)
Account Number: 2389845797
Bank: Zenith Bank
For updates, questions, or receipts, reach the family directly on 09010161768 or 09136604259.
Stanley Ikechukwu Oparah is 31, and he still has a life ahead of him. He just needs the chance to reach it.