How I Broke My Right Arm... part 1 of 3...

Yes, yes, I finally make some time to blog this down. After numerous reminders to myself whenever I answered those questions on memes like 5QF and GTKY, I decided I really should blog this down.

So, here goes the stories on how I broke my right arm, not once, not twice but THREE times... yes, THREE times!!!

I'll have to break the stories into 3 parts cos I tend to get talkative and long winded sometime... so, this is the 1st part of a trilogy...

Before I begin, go and get your chair, get comfy, grab yourself a drink if you like... and let's go back to my time long, long ago... to the year of... 1992

I was about 2 months shy from my 12th birthday and my school was in the afternoon. Had just recently joined the volleyball club and they had practice sessions in the morning. So was just playing around one fine morning and all of a sudden, a friend threw the ball quite high and it went flying... as it landed on the field and rolled its way to a teacher nearby, I hurried up and managed to grab the ball before it touches the teacher.

All I remembered was I was in a squatting position, right behind the teacher, holding the ball with my 2 hands and I quietly turned back, still squatting and I looked up, saw my group of friends running towards me, calling out my name. I saw my ball dropped onto the field and slowly rolled away.

I remembered one of my friend pointing at my hand and I looked down, and I saw something like this:
OK, that wasn't me of course. I got the image from Google Image search and I cropped off the poor girl's face. It was the closest resemblance to how my right arm looks like when I broke it... Yes, that was an arm. It has not been edited or photoshopped or whatever.

Scary right by the looks of it? What happened was for my case, I broke the 2 bones (radius & ulna) and it sort of shrunk - causing it to look squid-y or sort of like the letter 'S'. I am not making fun of this girl at all (which is why I cropped off her face). Until now, my right arm is about half an inch shorter than my left arm... Serious!

So anyway, yeah... there I was, squatting, back towards the teacher, volley ball rolling away, friends rushing over to me. And you know what I did amidst all those chaos?

I pinched my cheek with my other good hand, of course. Real hard.

I remembered asking myself "Is this real?", "Is that my arm?", "How did I end up with a squid-y looking arm?", "Why didn't I feel the pain YET?" and "Am I dreaming? Maybe I should pinched my cheek to check it"... which led to my cheek pinching move.

And after the pinching, it still didn't hurt. Both my cheek and my right arm. By then, few friends were squatting next to me (Oh goody... I'm a star!), one of them (a Red Crescent member) gently took hold of my arm and asked me whether I'm feeling any pain.

From that moment on, I couldn't remember much - probably suppressing all these memories I guess... even those I could remember were kinda vague... like:
- walking past another schoolmate who was laughing at my grotesque looking arm (I remember telling myself not to be his friend anymore...)
- walking with my Red Crescent friend to the teachers' room to get help
- hopping into the back seat of a teacher's car to go to the nearest clinic
- walking into the clinic looking like a freak and everyone else gaping at the freak show, got my hand covered up with a sling (to hide the freakish hand I guess... or to make me less tiring since I was holding my right arm with my left, sort of like cuddling it, scared that it might fall off... ;p)
- hopping back into the teacher's car to go to hospital (need to get doctor's letter in order to go hospital)
- sitting at the back, wondering what is happening, getting caught in the jam (surprisingly my arm still does not hurt!) and hearing my first English vulgar word... out of the teacher's mouth which is F*ck... (I don't understand its meaning then of course) but I always remembered it cos the teacher was frustrated at being caught in the jam with a student who is in pain (nope, still not feeling it)
- reaching the hospital, waiting for my turn to be checked by the doctor, mum and dad arrives at the hospital, worried sick
- asking the teacher whether I'm going to have an operation, which the teacher did not reply...

I remembered lying on the hospital bed trolley at the corridor (the hospital was packed and out of bed) waiting from 8am until 3pm for a doctor to be available. I remembered how cold it was lying there alone... wondering and thinking what will the doctors do to my hand... whether my life is ending right there and then... By the time I was wheeled into the doctor's room, I remembered being surrounded by a few nurses and 2 doctors.

One of them told the staff nurse to prepare 100 something to inject my hand (probably to make me drowsy and unconscious before they fix my arm). Of course, at the age of 2 months shy from my 12th birthday, I have great future ahead of me. I am afraid if I close my eyes, they are going to cut me open. So you know what I do as they inject the first dose into my veins?
I forced myself to open my eyes wider. And bigger.

And you know what the doctor did when he saw my reactions? He told the nurse to up the dose to 250 something. Crap... I know after that 2nd dose, my eyes felt real heavy. I know they pulled my arm straight (sort of just yanked it straight again) and immediately they wrapped my arm with the plaster of Paris. Then I was wheeled to the ward.

I spent a few hours there and the rest are all out of my head. No recollections of how I got discharged from the hospital and so on.

I do remember I had to skip school for about 2 months (supposed to be 1 month.. but thanks to my part 2 and 3 stories, I get to skip school for another month, which means I only attended classes for about 2 months for my last year in primary school hahaha...)

I also remembered that I struggled with my homework and revisions as the final primary school exam was due in 2 months time. That exam will determine which high school you will be sent to. Imagine 2 months left, and your right hand - the one you use to write things with are still mending...

I also had to drink the Chinese herbs (my eldest uncle was a Chinese doctor) everyday for the 2 months. Herbs that has insects and stuff in it. Herbs so bitter words cannot describe.

I do recalled friends telling me how I broke my hand (those who saw me running towards the ball before it hits the teacher). They said as I was squatting down after I managed to get hold of the ball, my right arm was in between my legs, so when I turned back mid squatting, I unknowingly twisted my right arm...

So there you go, the 1st part of my trilogy... And oh, before I end this, I know that my accident at school caused the management to fork out and settle my hospital bills (since it occurred on school ground) and the very next day, all the students had to pay 10 bucks for insurance coverage (cos the school ain't going to pay anymore if any accidents occur in the future)... stay tuned for the next part... :D