Within a matter of months this year I already had to
experience two emergency trips to hospital.
On the morning of Sunday 5th June, I took a
Capirox-20 capsule hoping to get rid of the pain in my middle back which had
been there for about a week. (That pain had been existing a day or 2 after I cut off a few branches from my mango tree because
those branches were beating against the car porch roof during a thunderstorm
the previous night. After that I
sharpened the saw and put it away.) The
pain did not go away. Instead, that
afternoon after I had my nap my head was spinning and I wanted to vomit. It took a while and a lot of retching and a
tube of ‘five-pagoda’ medicinal powder downed with some warm water. After throwing up a few bits of duck meat and
water, I felt better. By evening
everything was back to normal and I thought I was alright.
Wednesday 8th June, I was at the Perodua workshop getting
my car serviced. I felt dizzy and
thought I must be hungry since it was almost 11.00am and I had an early
breakfast of kuayteow and black coffee.
So I went to the tea-corner and made myself a 2in1 kopi-o and pressed
the dispenser for hot water. Only cold
water came out. I drank that because I
needed the sugar to pep me up. I munched
on a biscuit. A few moments later I
found myself spinning.
I moved to a seat next to the entrance to the
workshop. I tried keeping it under
control without alarming anyone by breathing deeply and evenly. I couldn’t keep it down. The spinning got worse. I called out to a lady in the office
for help. She said she could arrange for
someone to send me and my car home since I was in no condition to drive. Somehow my condition worsened as I began retching
but couldn’t throw up. I asked her for a
plastic bag so that I could throw up into it.
But after a lot of retching nothing came out. I thought the whole thing was like a scene
from The Exorcist. I retched so hard I felt
I was going to die right there.
The office lady asked for my home number and who I could
call. I hesitated because I didn’t want
to alarm my wife. But as my condition
got worse I called my wife and gave the lady my phone so she could speak to
her. A little later my daughter called
me. She had assessed my situation and
started taking her own actions to contain the situation. She arranged for my nephew to send my car
home. She got a friend who is a dental
surgeon in the hospital to check on me later and to call her back to report on
my condition.
The office lady called for an ambulance. It was not available, so she called the St
John’s Ambulance Brigade. These guys
were pretty professional. They checked
my vital signs and said I needed to go to hospital. The office lady finally managed to get an
ambulance. Before the ambulance arrived
I started to throw up the coffee I had earlier.
This time I succeeded because I was lying back, almost flat, against the
back of the office chair and I tilted my head to my right, like how they’d
position a drowning victim. Later while
being jostled in the jalopy ambulance I threw up some more coffee.
At the hospital emergency room a whole gang of people
swarmed around me and some asked questions about whether I felt pain and where
and if I had any heart problem, diabetes, hypertension, and etc. They
poked needles in the back of both my hands.
I don’t know what they were for.
Then a nurse poked another needle in my arm to draw blood samples. They stuck electronic pads all over my chest
and connected me to a heart monitor.
Later another guy connected a pair of lead cables and clamps on my chest
and another pair on both ankles. I
thought they were going to apply shock treatment on me, but they didn’t. Then they x-rayed my chest and belly.
After the flurry of emergency activity the whole gang
went off to one corner and chit-chatted among themselves. I started to retch again and threw up more
coffee. Someone complained, and then
called in a couple of cleaning personnel to clean up my mess. The atmosphere started getting colder. They pushed me into an emergency waiting room
to wait for the diagnosis. There were
rows of beds and every bed was occupied.
Mine was the only vacant space left.
It was really cold and I pulled the blanket to cover me up to my
neck.
Later my wife and younger brother located me and brought
me spare clothes and a large bath towel.
I got my brother to put me onto a wheel-chair and pushed me to the
toilet. I had a full bladder by
then. Later in the afternoon I tried
several times to get up and go to the bathroom but I couldn’t get on my feet. Each time I sat up my head started
spinning. My body felt weak and wouldn’t
stay upright. I gave up and waited for
my brother to come back in the evening.
By then a nurse had announced that the doctors had found nothing wrong
with me and told me to go home. I called
my brother and told him the news.
I waited for the nurse to remove the needles in my
hands. She removed the ones on my right
hand and said she’d remove the others later.
My right leg started to cramp due to the cold. I moved it about and raised it a few times to
keep it from getting worse. My bladder
kept filling up again. It was a long
while later that she came back and removed the other needles. She gave me a card and told me to collect my
medicines from the pharmacy before leaving. When my wife and brother came in later we made another wheel-chair
trip to the toilet.
As we moved out from the ward, I noticed there were beds
filled with patients lined up against the walls of the corridor.
