I Had A Great And Excruciating Fall

It has been a full 14 hours since my fall and the pain at my lower back is as painful as it was when I first tumbled. As I sit here blogging, the pain gnaws at my spinal lumbar, even when I stand and many of the everyday functions we take for granted, such as bending , stooping, coughing, turning , changing sides or getting up from bed.

This was certainly an unexpected turn of events. I had never imagined this to have had happened. One minute I was carrying on my life as usual, the next I was paralysed with insufferable pain.

So I guess I will have to put on hold my "ultimate" blog and this will be separated into three parts - (1) women issues/rights gone awry, (2 )employment rights/issues and (3)prejudice, stereotyope and discrimination

It was an ominous rainy Sunday morning anyway. I had this same feeling when someone came into and promptly walked out of my life one fine morning (the benign cyst on my back burst and bled a flow of pus) , the day my finger bled profusely on a tin-can opening accident (it was a nightmarish live with a Filipino tenant) or the day the ceiling fan came apart (someone left me as well).

Only this time, a number of premonitions flashed. The kitchen fluorescence went kaput. My juicer cum blender tore to bits even though its lid fasteners were already malfunctioning and I had to hold it down to extract juices all the time.

People, if you have a queasy, uneasy and intuitive premonition anytime (like some broken glasses, eyes twitching or some small incidents) , go on the hunch and do not endanger yourself in anyway.

I ventured out of my house that fatetful morning, the second time, to hunt down kitchen scrubs in my 3 months old BATA rubber strapped sandals (which I bought because my flip-flops were dangerously slippery, I thought). Its soles had worn down so tremendously only after a week of use. So I had my one foot flailing up in the air and down on my buttocks I went, really HARD!. Before I know it, I broke out in cold sweat, my eyes saw stars and I was light-headed. The seething pain tore through my spine and back.

I pulled myself up and knelt for eternity. Two passers-by stopped and tried soothing my howls of pain. I finally grasped one Malay dude's arms and wrenched myself up. His arm was like a lifeline, a buoy of humanity which tells me that the milk of human kindness is still alive and well. He did not realise this but in my moment of pain and aloneless, I almost cried out loud for his life-saving, out-stretched hand. I thanked them and limped home, the excruciating pain spreading and tormenting.

The only other time I fell was when I was in secondary school and that was prostrate, my foot tripping over a protruding drain-cover grill, knocking my knees on the concrete pavement. Of course , mother told me I fell and sprained my arm at home once (an event I cannot remember since I was so young then and which explained the perpetual tenderness I feel in my left arm ) and I did fall in school on a few occasions.

I laid in bed, thinking that with time I would recover. Nevertheless I telephoned the A&E department of a local hospital to seek advice. After a full hour of unremitting pain, I thought I had to get my butt out to have my lumbar checked.

Lo and behold, the X-ray scan showed a compressed wedged vertebra fracture! Oh my god! What does that mean? Will I be paralysed? Will I be another late Christopher Reeves who fell from a horse, an innocuous fall where most riders would have gotten off quite unscathed? When I did my research today, it seems that this could just be a non-complicated non-paraglepian fall.

The doctor told me he is sending me home and asked if I had my bowels moved or urine passed. I promptly limped to the john to prove I am still continent. By the way he did a digital middle-finger rectal examination and I laughed inside when I recalled my blog on that (remember the alien abduction and tracking devices implantation?)

It was quite a day, observing and chatting with patients, cabbies and health-care personnel. The male nurses and doctors were professional and tender-loving-caring. These are the big, strong and compassionate lads we should see more of in our health-care industry. We have so many Indians and Filipinos here. On admission, I couldn't hear the Indian attendant's last sentence, what with the surgical mask and heavily-accented tone.

One young stocky patient had gastritis! WHOA! And I thought being the mesomorphous body frame he was in, that that should not have been an issue. But on reflecting, I realised it wasn't the outside but the insides that matters. It is the gastric juices eating up your internal linings when your hunger pangs send your stomach growling and you don't eat anything because you are busy working the economy that leaves a gaping ulceration. So do not judge a person by the appearance.

Think Karen Carpenter again. So what does this tell you? Our society has to go beyond the superficial and physical manifestations to realise the untold sufferings behind the scene. That is a person may appear perfectly normal but you don't know what is eating his mind, his heart and his body. Do you get it now, dear citizens? Must you see me lying in a pool of blood before you start letting me live my life?

I could see how these health-care professionals must have the presence of mind, the alert and quick-acting poise coupled with the compassion and care. But wait, the lady radiographer actually griped about my NIKE cross trainer (which I bought for the same reason of safety to hike on slippery, murky and hilly terrain in the reserve) dirtying her scan bed. WOMAN! Please! I am like in excruciating pain and you mind my fucking shoes?

She remarked quite unbelievingly that I could still joke and chat jovially. She doesn't know the pain I was in, the sense of hopelessness and helplessness in my life right now, the thought of an impending old age and death and how if something like this hit me, I won't be able to work for prolonged periods, starve and my finances down to zero.

I am only bitching, smiling , laughing and being clownish to hide all the deep sorrows I feel inside for myself, our society, the world - the people who suffer and live lives of terrible pain. I wish I could just end it all. Someone remarked that a clown is in reality an unhappy person.

I am all alone and no one knows any better. Who is going to foot my medical bills since I have sold off my insurances as I can no longer afford them? I am on my own now and when I think of all the ex-bosses, the heartless, self-enriching , economy-drivers that they are, I seethe to imagine the countless lives they have exploited and discharged, all in the name of cost-savings, politics and what-not.

The porter who wheeled me around was working for a Japanese multi-national who then had a retrenchment because of cost-cutting measures. He now earns so much less and has a wife and two school-going kids to provide for. The cabby who drove me home, once a Finance Manager, has seen his fair share of unscrupulous corporatism. These are people who give a face to what an economy does not reveal. I will blog on "Employment issues/rights" and you will see for yourself how this economy has broken spirits, lives and defiled the very meaning of humanity.

But before all that I am going to find that receipt and trot off to the shoe shop for a refund for this pair of shoddy, rubbery hogwash they sold as man's best foot forward which almost cost me my life! At least if I die, I want to die quickly and in one piece. Not in an accident maimed or a lingering death with terminal illness.