Shortly after arriving in Ottawa with her two young children following her husband’s appointment as Cameroon’s High Commissioner (Ambassador) to Canada, Mercy’s life would take a dramatic turn. On October 23, 2009, she complained of fatigue, fever, a headache, blurred vision…and was rushed to the hospital for what she thought was a routine ailment. Amid the H1N1 crisis, emergency room staff overlooked her medical history, misdiagnosed her condition, prescribed Tamiflu, and sent her home, only for her to be rushed again to the emergency department two days later following a sudden deterioration of her condition. When she was placed in a wheelchair shortly thereafter, little did she know that she had just taken her last steps on her own two feet. She was in fact in the throes of endocarditis, a virulent infection of the heart valves. She soon slipped into a coma and spent several weeks wavering between life and death.

Despite the cataclysmic prognosis from the doctors and the pressure brought to bear on him, her husband refused to grant consent for her to be taken off life support.

Mercy would later make a miraculous recovery just when her caregivers had pointed out that she had only a few hours to live. In the weeks and months that followed, she would undergo four heart surgeries as well as the amputation of her two arms and two legs – the only options left to save her life. Following intensive physical and psychological therapy and the fitting of prostheses, Mercy became a virtual prosthetic woman: two prosthetic heart valves, two prosthetic arms and two prosthetic legs.

The bouts of depression and the suicidal thoughts she wrestled with following her amputations were merely the clouds that foreshadowed the sunshine. Guided by her faith, fortitude and the support of her family and community, Mercy has found a new calling as champion for the afflicted. Through The Mercy Azoh-Mbi Heart Foundation, she aims to spread rays of sunshine so that others do not die needlessly from easily treatable heart conditions.