That day... so many years ago
*Warning.. long and winding story*Im writing this out now so that I will not forget what happened at the time. Its been so long, the trauma and shock have long gone. What’s left is a vague memory of how I felt at the time and what I did. Up until then, that was the worst sort of experience I had been through in my very short life. Little would I expect to go through an almost similar experience last year, though in more dramatic fashion.
This was 6 years ago. I was still in secondary school, 14 years old at the time. My brother, my mother and I decided to give staying together a try, so we all moved into a small flat near my school. Things weren’t smooth at the time. Being a teen, my brother pretty much kept to himself, and my mother was on and off her medication according to her own will. There was a lot of arguing among the 3 of us at that time. Because my mother wasn’t quite herself, my brother went out a lot, and my friends stopped coming to find me because they were a little afraid of my mother.
It was the 2nd of March 1999. I remember because that’s my mothers birthday. I was getting ready to go to school. For some reason, my mother was pestering me to go to the market to buy RM 1 worth of taugeh (bean sprouts)… Now, RM1 worth of bean sprouts is a lot… almost a third of a bucket. She had been complaining about not being able to sleep for the past few days. She said she wanted to fry the sprouts. On her insistence, I quickly went to buy, came home and changed into my school uniform.
Just as I was about to leave, I went to speak to her. I felt a little strange, because she was lying down on the bed and she said to me “Hann, I took some medicine and ill be sleeping for quite some time, maybe the entire day or two.” At that, I jumped a bit. I asked her what she took, and she said don’t worry, she just took her psychiatric tablets at a heavy dose to help her sleep. But the fact that I had to dig that information out of her made me worried. I went searching for the bottle and found it underneath the bed. I remembered there was quite a number of tablets remaining in it, but now it was empty. The little poisonous sign at the side of the bottle just added to my panic.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I knew she needed medical attention, despite her insistence that she knew what she was doing. She tried convincing me that it was really ok, and that she would just sleep for a day or two. But that little skeleton sign on the bottle suggested otherwise to me. So I brought her to the nearest clinic, but they just asked me to send her to a hospital. By this time, my mothers eyes were already rolling upwards and she seem to be going into some kind of fit. I was really starting to get traumatized. They called a cab for me and sent me on my way. Lucky at the time, I had some money with me. In the cab, all I could do was old her hand and hope she was ok.
By the time we arrived at the hospital, my mother was totally unaware of her surroundings. There was saliva coming down her mouth, her body was stiff and we had to bring her in with a wheel chair with the help of a security guard. At that moment, I felt a great sense of urgency. My mother needed medical attention asap, but to my annoyance there seemed to be no one else that cared in that emergency ward. Just another case to them. I even had to register her first and pay RM 1 at the counter! The nerve of these people. I sat there beside my mother on the stretcher waiting for the doctor, holding her stiff hand, though I didn’t think she could feel it. There were all sorts of people around me; some looked like they’ve been in an accident, others looked like they were fighting and some just looked fine which made me wonder what they were doing here anyway. Did they have a mother who just swallowed 2 dozen tablets too? I doubted it.
When the doctor finally came, he just asked a few brief questions to me and told me to go out. As they drew the curtains, I could see through the gaps that they were going to insert some tube (or something) down her throat to suck out the tablets. I knew my mother resisted because I could hear her vomiting the tube out. I was then told to go to the lobby and wait.
So I waited, a thousand thoughts going through my mind. I missed school. I was in my uniform. I used up all my money for the cab money. How am I going to get back? Never mind that, what am I going to do now? Will she be ok? After about 30 mins of waiting, a nurse came to me and asked me to check her into one of the wards. They pushed her to me, still on a wheel chair and I took over, pushing her to the registration counter on the other side of the hospital. It felt like something out of a movie rather than real life. There I was, school uniform and school bag and all pushing my mother on a wheel chair. I was comforted that she at least could call my name even though her body was still stiff and she was now biting her own lips. I really wondered what people thought as they walked pass us.
It was a huge ward, with at least 40 over beds. A scary sight seeing so many sick people. I pushed her to the empty bed and with with the nurses help laid her on the bed. I was left alone again before a doctor came up to me 15 later to query me. I told her my mothers history, though I was unsure whether to say this was a suicide attempt. But the doctor did mention that all the windows and doors to the porch was sealed to prevent any jumping off the roof. She eventually told me that my mother had swallowed 29 tablets, and it was a good thing she was brought here quickly.
By the time I checked her in to the ward in was noon. I didn’t know quite what to do. I had no appetite to eat, and I didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone. My brother was in school, my father was at work and I only had a few coins in my pocket. So even if I wanted to eat, there wasn’t enough money. I sat beside my mother there the entire day, watching the day pass, looking for any sign of improvement from my mother. In between, the patient in a nearby bed almost died. The doctors and nurses drew the curtains and tried resuscitating him using the EMP machine. I could here the doctors instructions and the sound of the bed jerk everytime the doctor used the EMP. The mans family members just stood aside, praying (I think) that he would make it. Thankfully the man did come around. But that incident really ruffled my feathers. I knew I should call someone. I knew I should tell someone. But I couldn’t. I needed some time to absorb what was happening, and frankly I was unwilling to leave her side even for a moment. The doctors and nurses did ask me to go back, but something inside me just insisted on staying.
I remembered when I was young, my mother used to tell me that coma patients could still subconsciously hear when you speak. She said to me that if ever this happened to her, talk to her because she would be able to hear. So that what I did. I talked to her. I told her where we were, told her she’ll be ok, asked her why she did what she did. And as I did this, I was almost at tears, though I didn’t allow myself to cry. At times, I thought I saw a response in her eyebrows or through the squeeze of her hand, but I could not know for sure. So I just kept on talking. I told her to stop biting her lips, because it was starting to bleed. I only hoped that someone deep in her mind, she could know that I was there beside her and that she was not alone.
To be continued...
posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 11:53 pm
Comments: 1
