Attacked!

Tuesday 12th August 2008

At twenty after midnight this morning, at my house, while on the last lap of our movie marathon, Zihan went to the kitchen toilet to pee and suddenly came out again, impossibly red in the face, struggling to breathe.

"Kakak, can I have a glass of hot water? I can't breathe!" she gasped.

And so began, our midnight drama.

Within five minutes, I was calling my mother (she was still up, waiting for Zihan to come home from my house) while we rushed Zihan to Changi General Hospital A&E -swollen red eyes, wild hair and everything. Needless to say, I was suddenly feeling helpless useless and displaced. And yes, scared.

Finally, at around 3am, after a series of needles, tests, x-rays and some intimacy with the nebulizer, her condition stabilized significantly. She even started singing some girly girl song while waiting to see the doctor again but he later declared her unfit to go home (maybe he heard her singing) and strongly recommended admission -at which point he ruminated letting her stay there or sending her to KKH. The thought of Zihan in KKH, being stuffed into a baby cot and huge diapers popped into my mind and I relayed the image to my mother, who laughed heartily at the thought, for a good five minutes. It took the heaviness from my heart and the furrow from her brow for awhile. Anyway, Changi General Hospital it was and by 5am, she was clad in CGH's latest patient fashion in a lovely shade of dusty pink. My mom stayed with her while Azim and I left because he's got classes at 9am and yesterday's clothes were fusing with our skin. Zihan was not pleased at being hospitalized, whining as she was wheeled to the ward about how mean we were to leave her in the "orang tua hospital". When I presented to her the KKH baby cot option, she shut up some.

But by the time Azim and I visited her again in the afternoon, she looked heaps better, happily surrounded by some of her Bedok Greeners, who loyally rushed down after school to see her. Or rather, who jumped at any chance to give their parents a valid reason to extend their weekday curfews. :p

Mak, kawan sakit masok 'ospital. Nanti balik lambat tau nak pergi tengok dier.


Nonetheless, she gave us quite a scare.

I tell you, I felt my heart jump into my throat when Zihan staggered out of the toilet telling us between ragged breaths that she couldn't breathe. And I still don't know why she asked for a drink of hot water in an attempt to ease her laboured breathing. Apa jer! But I'm glad we made that split-second decision to rush her to the hospital after I realized her symptoms sounded an awful lot like the ones I had when I got an anaphylactic shock from a previously-unknown allergy to Panadol when I was eighteen. Hers was not an anaphylactic shock but an asthma attack -and a pretty serious one at that. With only one very minor asthmatic episode so far in her life back then when she was in primary school, it's quite puzzling how this one got so serious and we still don't know what was the trigger. Dust? Food? Carpet? Cat? No prizes for guessing the cat I'm referring to here.

Oh..it's all quite distressing. And I'm only the sister! Imagine how my mom must be feeling when I made the call to her on the way to the hospital, letting her know what was happening to her youngest offspring. Then again, my mom's pretty strong. I'm quite a wuss. Just a peek over the nurse's shoulder when she was taking Zihan's stats showed me an alarming oxygen level, which made my stomach turn and my skin crawl. Which was by no means an easy thing considering I'm pretty thick-skinned.

*shudders*

I can't imagine how this wuss is going to be a mother one day to children who are going to get -at the very least- a graze on the knee from running too fast at the playground. That harmless graze with perhaps the merest ooze of blood will probably be processed in my kan-cheong mind as an infected gaping wound and I'll be at the doc's before you can say "Handyplast!".

But I'll cross that bridge when I reach it.

Till then.....Zihan, DON'T SCARE US ME LIKE THAT AGAIN, PLEASE!?

:S

Oh, and get well soon!