Nwachukwu Ozioko, popularly known as Vast, one half of Nigerian music duo, Bracket, has opened up about his near-death experience battling lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, in 2013.
Speaking in a recent interview on the AFRIMMA Podcast, Vast recounted his health challenge, revealing the financial toll treatment took on him and the people around him.
“It was a time in my life I will never forget. The people around me showed me love. Normally after making money everyone gets their cut but during this period, everyone on the team brought their money together to treat me,” he said.
Giving insights into what he went through during his treatment, Vast recalled that he was made to sign an undertaking to protect the doctors in the unfortunate event that things didn’t turn out well.
He said, “Cancer is not the problem, it’s the treatment. The process is deadly. They started with my spine, and I don’t even know what they did to it. I was also asked to sign a form that if anything happens to me, I can’t hold them responsible.
“I nearly passed from the treatment. At some point, I lost so much blood that it affected my heart and I had to be admitted for blood transfusion.
“I was very skinny that you could see my ribs. It also made us spend a lot of money.”
On how he was diagnosed, Vast revealed that after he was tested several times and nothing was found to be wrong with him, it took the intervention of a nurse who suggested an ultrasound that made doctors discover a growth in his body, which was later confirmed in the UK to be cancerous.
“They ran several tests but still couldn’t find anything. It was a nurse who suggested doing an ultrasound, and that was when they discovered a growth spreading in my body. It was later in the UK that it was confirmed to be cancerous,” Vast recalled. Additionally, Vast noted that he is now cancer-free.
Shedding more light on the diagnosis, the other half of Bracket, Smash, said he was shocked by what was found, considering Vast led a healthy lifestyle.
He recounted how doctors struggled to identify the illness, delaying the diagnosis for over three months after sending his blood samples to South Africa without results.
Smash said, “After a while of him not looking himself, he went to one of the biggest hospitals in Victoria Island, Lagos. They started with blood samples but couldn’t treat him because they didn’t know what was wrong.
“After some time, they said they had sent the blood sample to South Africa. We had a show in Burkina Faso, but because of his health, we had to send the money to Flavour to perform at the show.
“They said they sent the sample in September, but by December no result had been given. So I had to confront the doctor, telling him that if anything happened to Vast he would be held responsible. That was when he advised us to take him abroad.”
