Former Safaricom Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore realized he had a rare form of blood cancer when he was admitted at a hospital in London in 2017.
Collymore was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and stayed at the hospital for nearly a year as doctors tried to fight the killer disease.
When he returned to the country in July, 2018, he had an exclusive interview with Daily Nation, in which he narrated his experience from his hospital bed.
Asked by his interviewer, Jackson Biko, whether he ever cried during the nine months he was at the hospital, Collymore replied:
"I think I did. Once or twice, in the early days. There was a period of uncertainty, when I didn’t know exactly if I had cancer or not but everything was indicative that perhaps I had it."
After a few weeks at the health facility, the doctors confirmed his worst fears. He had cancer. Collymore had to cry.
"I came to that realisation in London at the hospital when it dawned on me that it was cancer. But I don't think I cried because I thought I was going to die, I think I cried because I started to realise how much everybody else cared," he said.
When news spread around and abroad that he was suffering from Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a condition which meant his immune system had broken down due to failure by his body to produce white blood cells, his friends and colleagues sent hundreds of messages to encourage and empathise with him. The messages made him to cry more.
"And I cried in response to the messages. It was a death moving messages, even the sea was moved. Everybody at Safaricom and just the general Kenyan public, strangers, acquaintances, friends, just wishing you well," said the father of four.
Collymore, 61, died on Monday and was cremated on Tuesday at Kariokor Hindu Crematorium in Nairobi.