my A&E experience

for the first time, i felt my life slipping out of my hands. every breath was a challenge, a success, a reminder that i was still in control. my hands cramped up into a half-fist, my feet were bent inwards like they’d been electric-shocked. i wanted to give up breathing. it was so tiring, it was not going anywhere.

mind over body, the paramedic told me. you’re doing great. you can breathe. you must try to breathe slowly. we're almost reaching the hospital. there was some murmuring. what’s her heartrate, someone asked. 180 per minute. i didn’t know what the normal heartbeat rate was so i didn’t know if that was bad. i only knew i had to fight for breath.

then the paralysis worsened. i couldn’t feel my chest or my upper body anymore. feeling like i was going to pass out soon, i gasped as much of my symptoms to the paramedics as possible. i can’t feel my body! feet pain! wrist pain!

i wondered if my hands and legs would be chopped off from my body to save me. whether i’ll leave the hospital with a permanent disability. but in that moment, gasping for every breath, it didn’t matter to me anymore, i just wanted to stay alive.

but what if i didn’t come out alive? was i ready to die?

i thought about the teenage girl whose obituary i saw in the papers on my birthday this year, but died of cancer on the very day i was born. and how i had cried for her even though i didn’t even know her, because there feels like some kind of connection you know, especially to someone who looks like you?

i still had that half-written book to finish, but otherwise i guess i was ready? i had done what i had wanted to do in this life. have i?? i had said what i wanted to say to the people important to me; and for the things i have not yet said, i have written them down already. there were some things i still wanted to do before i die, like attending the climate conference COP one day, or swimming open water in some foreign country.

but i guess there was no stopping fate if i was to die. i steeled myself to accept that. then i remembered the paramedic’s mind-over-body advice, and simultaneously tried to reject that. i will stay alive, i will stay alive.

when breathing became easier later, i lay in bed, not moving, waiting for someone to attend to me. then i remembered what my physiotherapist sister said about how not moving and getting the blood circulating might make the pain worse instead. pain is often psychological, she had said. i remembered how during muscle cramp last week, people told me also that it’s important to get blood flowing in the muscles. i couldn’t lift my legs or hands, so i wiggled them aggressively until the doctor came back.

he took a blood test and put me on IV drip to put some salts and water inside my blood as i was getting dehydrated. i was so happy to feel the pain prick of the needle — so i didn’t hurt my nervous system after all (i had a back fall). the IV drip felt so good; it sent violent rhythmic contractions through my fingers, energising my blood flow.

i did an x-ray later, and then the doctor said i could be discharged. i couldn’t believe it was so fast. i was going to be okay. i was already okay.

there was an elderly woman next to me who kept speaking to me in Malay. i asked her if she could speak English, but she continued to respond in Malay, so i nodded, smiled when she smiled, and frowned when she frowned. i remembered how only a while ago i had wanted someone by my bedside to reassure me, talk to me, and listen to me gasp about the intensifying paralysis. for someone to tell me i'm not alone. but there was no one, because the doctors and nurses were so busy with so many in the A&E. so i hoped that my nodding and listening would help her a tiny bit.

as i waited for my parents to pick me up, i began to cry. i tried to but couldn’t stop, only finally forcing myself to stop because it was becoming hard to breathe again with all that mucus. this whole experience, while short, was just so traumatic. shaking in that sliver between life and death. stunned into a full-body paralysis with only control over my breath. i made it out alive. thank you God, thank you everyone who took care of me, thank you mind, thank you body.