By Toyin Adeniyi
“Thank you, pastor, for not dying,” were the words that greeted Pastor Sarah Omakwu, after surviving a life-threatening medical experience.
Omakwu is the Senior Pastor of the Abuja-based Family Worship Centre.
She had gone to the hospital for a simple colonoscopy test on July 16, 2025, but that harmless procedure spiraled into a medical emergency that left her battling for life.
She shared her story in an online video monitored by Church Times Nigeria.
What is colonoscopy
The procedure is called a colonoscopy. For those who may not know, colonoscopy is a medical procedure used to examine the lining of the entire large intestine (the colon and rectum).
It involves screening for colorectal cancer: It is a primary and highly effective tool for screening. It allows the doctor to find and remove precancerous growths called polyps before they can turn into cancer.
That is what she went to do, which led to a lot of complications and almost to her death. She now uses an ostomy bag to pass stool.
How it started
Pastor Omakwu had arrived early at the hospital that morning, hoping to finish the procedure quickly and head on to other activities. It was expected to take about 15 minutes, she said. But complications set in, even before the procedure began.
She overheard the doctor telling his assistant, “This thing is not working well.”
She admitted that on a normal day she would have stood up and walked out. Rather, she stayed back and allowed the medical personnel to proceed.
During the procedure, she felt a sharp pain that made her scream. “He scraped something and I screamed,” she recalled. “Then he did it again, and I screamed a second time.”
Though the doctor dismissed it as “just a little thing,” her condition deteriorated soon after. “When I tried to stand up, I couldn’t,” she said. “I kept getting weak and weak and weak.”
Despite repeated attempts, she remained unable to walk or sit up. Hours passed with her strength draining away. By the third hour, she began vomiting repeatedly. “Nobody heard me,” she said, explaining that the matron assigned to her “had left and sat somewhere else.”
By noon, she reached out to the doctor who had referred her. His shock was immediate. “Are you still there?” he asked.
Within minutes, he arrived with other doctors, who attempted to help her stand and relieve what they initially suspected might be accumulated gas in her bowels.
“They worked so hard,” she said. But her condition was getting worse. She was getting weaker.
Her turning point came when she called Dayo, her son-in-law. “When Dayo heard my voice, he said, ‘Mom, are you okay?’” she recounted. “Normally, I would say, ‘I’m fine, no problem.’ But God helped me this one time to say the greatest ‘no’ I’ve ever said in my life.”
That “no,” she believes, saved her.
Dayo and his wife, Favour, rushed to the facility, alerting others along the way. When they arrived, her condition had worsened severely.
Describing how she felt, and pointing to her two hands, she said, “If you lifted this hand, it fell. You lifted the other, it fell. I was present but absent.”
When her son-in-law and more doctors arrived, they found that she had no pulse. She was quickly being revived. “My blood pressure was not reading,” she said. When the machine finally picked up a number, it was 50/30. “They carried me and put me in the ambulance. I was taken to another hospital,” she recalled.
Surgical procedure
While being transported, she began screaming from intense stomach pain. “I was groaning,” she said. By then, the atmosphere was tense. News was flying around that something untoward had happened to her.
After scans and tests, the medical team decided she needed emergency surgery, which took three hours.
According to her, surgeons found “polluted water” in her stomach and signs that she was becoming septic.
“One of the nurses told me they were racing against time because the blood pressure was so low,” she said. “At a point, it got to 40 over 20.”
Surgeons discovered a weak section of her colon that posed a risk of perforation. They removed the section, tied it off, and connected it to a colostomy bag. “For the past few months,” she said quietly, referring to the colostomy bag, “this is my toilet.”
Pastor Omakwu spent eight days in the hospital, with doctors checking on her frequently. “Whenever the doctor came to my room and asked, ‘How are you today, pastor?’ I would say, ‘Fine,’” she recalled. “And he would reply, ‘We should thank you, pastor, for not dying.’”
She expressed deep gratitude to her family and the church community: “I thank God for Dayo, my main man. I thank God for all my children, Favour and Blessing and you all over the place.” She also acknowledged the congregation’s prayers. “Thank you for praying before I went into that theatre.”
Mosyt of all, she attributed her survival to divine intervention. She told the church she believed angels stood by her hospital bed. “I believe the angels of God were sent to watch over me.”
Now in recovery, she urged the church to join her in gratitude. “On this Thanksgiving, please help me thank God,” she said. “But for God, it would have been a different Thanksgiving today.”
