Of Slipped Disc and Falling Off the Bed
Shuyin is growing very well and she’s quite tall for her age. She’s not chubby but certainly getting heavier by the day. With that in mind, I was still not careful when carrying her last week when she was crying for attention while I was making breakfast. I just swoop her with my left arm while holding a piece of bread with the other. That did it – a snap on my back, but I just didn’t have the heart to put her down and so I continued putting cheese on the bread, placed them in the oven and proceeded to making two mugs of Milo while enduring the sharp pain on my lower back. Then I smelled a schtinko... probably the reason why she cried in the first place...
I went to the store room to look for a new Dryper pack. Struggling to hold her in my left arm while trying to pull the heavy jumbo bag with my right hand. Had to bend down too to tear the bag with my finger nail and... a second snap... Yeouch!
Managed to change her but didn’t manage to salvage the burnt breakfast in the oven!
I still drove to work but by midday, I just couldn’t take the pain and told the boss that I needed to get treatment for the bad back.
At the chiropractor center in Subang Jaya, the doctor had a good look and coolly said “Ahah! This is not your first time!”
“First time of what?” I retorted.
“Slipped disc” the reply came with a painful poke on my spine.
“Arrgh that hurts!!! I have slipped disc?”
Oh man... come to think of it, this wasn’t the first time I had the same acute pain at the same spot. So it’s true, I had it before and I just didn’t know it!
So my daughter is not to be blamed. My spine has had years of abuse – a childhood of selling bananas at pasar malam, then continued with the family-run satay business during my teenage years. All those heavy liftings and hard labour...
Now that I have a family, chores like cooking, cleaning, mopping the floor, gardening, cutting the grass, etc. I would do them all without much hesitation, and putting more stress on my ageing spine. It’s just a matter of time and needed the last straw to finally break my back...
Maybe now is a good time to consider getting a maid?
A Hard Thud!
That’s what I heard early morning yesterday, followed by a loud wailing. I was half asleep, half panic and half blur. It took us more than an hour to calm Shuyin down. We inspected her head for signs of bruising but could not find anything visible under the flashlight. I was really worried and wifey kept saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” to Shuyin while cuddling her to sleep.
I was perplexed as Shuyin rarely make the same mistake twice. She has fallen off the bed when she was 3 months old, and that was her first and her last. Since her first fall, I think subconsciously she’s aware of the possibility of falling off, and so, even when she sleeps on the edge of the bed with her hand dangling down, she’d never fall! How come this time she did?
All of us fell asleep after an hour or so and in the morning, I was glad to see Shuyin springing back to her usual self. While I was making breakfast, wifey confessed that she had accidentally KICKED Shuyin off the bed!
What? KICKED SHUYIN OFF THE BED?!! Hmmm... Now I know why she repeatedly said sorry to Shuyin and the mystery of her fall finally solved!
Shuyin usually climbs out of her cot, onto our bed in the middle of the night and would normally park herself between her parents, but that night, she slept near wifey’s feet. Wifey said that she felt a “pillow” at her feet and was not comfortable sleeping with her knees bent and so she kicked the “pillow” off to straighten her legs. She felt strange that the “pillow” was rather heavy, but before she could think any further, well, you know the rest...
To fall off the bed is one thing, but to be kicked out before the hard fall? That must've been a double whammy, not to mention the psychological trauma of being “violently rejected”! No wonder it took Shuyin more than an hour to calm down – it was double the pain with the awful thought of being hurt by the very person she trusted most! *Sigh*... I really can’t imagine...
I’m really glad that Shuyin is a-okay but she sustained minor cuts on her left knuckles. She must have blocked her fall with her left hand – clever and agile little girl!
Poor little girl!
Wifey called me up for lunch yesterday. She felt sooooooooo guilty and wanted to talk about it. She was late coming back from work yesterday but when she came back, she took out something from the boot of her car...
And for that, you get a tricycle! Mommy went all the way to Puchong to look for this!
I heard wifey said to Shuyin “When you’re all grown up and need a real set of wheels to move around, mommy will gladly pay for the down payment of your first car!”
Well mommy, I’m recording your statement here... *grin*
.
Labels: Assorted Blah, Shuyin




