Not again!

"Tell her lah!" mom prompted dad eagerly and when he was slow to reply, she went on, "You know your dad has been picking up Ning from school these past few days and yesterday, he told me that Ning was the prettiest, the most beautiful girl there! I told your father he should tell you, it would make you so proud!"

And so it did. I beamed with pride. My babe is beautiful. But just minutes after mom said that, Caitlin had a bad accident. Afterwards, mom blamed herself for saying that. Of course it was not her fault. This incident could have happened at any time at the rate the girl kept jumping on the sofa and leaping from one to another.

We had gone out for a drive around the estate to calm Ms Trinity Rose down because she cried so inconsolably when I merely took away a dirty shoe and told her sternly "No!". As we were driving off, we saw Ning standing at the gate looking unhappy that she was included in the car. Dad offered to pick her up and bring her along for the ride. But as we cruised past, we saw her already back in the house, jumping on the sofa, so we left. Dad later said we should have taken her for the car ride, then it wouldn't have happened. But such is life eh?

Minutes later, we got a frantic call from home asking us to drive home - Ning had had a bad fall and bleeding. Dad drove home quickly and I rushed back to the house. I saw globs of blood on the floor, the coffee table, her uniform stained with patches of red. She was sobbing in Lolita's arms.

There was an open gash on her left eyebrow. But what alarmed me was the eye itself. The eyelid had swollen shut; the size of a shiny, purple hen's egg. Luckily dad and mom were there. They drove us to Mt Alvernia hospital. Ning cried all the way there and kept repeating: "I don't want them to laugh at me! My friends will laugh at me!"

She definitely required stitches. The eye itself looked ok when the dr pried up the eyelid (which caused Ning some pain) to look. But the x-ray showed a possible fracture of the upper edge of the left eye socket. The hospital wanted an opthalmologist to confirm. So they tried calling. While waiting, Ning fell asleep.

Now this is the part that left me fuming. We waited for more than an hour while the hospital tried, without success, to get a consultant specialist down to the emergency room to have a look. Ning was insured under KH's company's group hospitalisation and medical insurance scheme, Aviva. So the specialist had to come from Aviva's panel of doctors. The nurses tried to call and page. No fault of theirs. But not ONE of the six opthalmologists from the panel came. Some had no response to the paging. Others were not contactable, no answering service, and some refused to come. One said he does not treat at Mt Alvernia. The hospital then tried their own specialists but one was on leave and the covering doctor said he did not treat children! So in frustration and anger, I discharged Ning and took her over to KKWCH. KH had arrived by then, so all of us including mom and dad, drove over to KH, mom sitting in our backseat with Ning's head on her lap. I have a lot to say on this and will speak my piece in a letter to Aviva, MAH, MOH and the press. But first, I had to get Ning treated.

At the hospital, she was seen immediately. The eye looked ok - they tested her vision by asking me to pry up her swollen lid. It was painful for Ning and painful for me to be the cause of it! Then the doctor looked at the x-rays and tried to prod the area. Ning said it hurt. The doctor kept asking her which part was painful - the eyelid or the upper part and watching her, I honestly don't think Ning could even differentiate the area. In any case there was too much swelling there to tell, so the doctor said the x-rays will be shown to the x-ray specialist the next day for an opinion.

As for the gash, they recommended stitching but not under GA as they did not know the extent of the damage and did not want to risk masking of symptoms of a head injury as both the after-effects of GA and a head injury were similar. So they applied a gel and we waited for half an hour. Then Ning was bundled onto a restraining board, velcroed and rolled into a blanket. The doctor stitched away while we talked to her to distract her from the stitching. She was a trooper and never cried at all, tearing and wincing only at the last stitch. I was so proud of her.

We - KH, Ning, baby Trinity and I - ended our evening with dinner at KKWCH's McDonalds before going home, drained and tired from the stress of the events.