Weuji

It's Day Three since I got injured and I visited the Polyclinic at Bukit Merah to get a referral for X-ray. The walk to the Polyclinic was arduous. My foot had ballooned from a size 7 to a size 9. It was a chore to get my toes to grip on to the slippers I wore. I could only drag my right foot along as I limped my way to the Polyclinic.

It took me two hours to see the doctor for a referral for an X-ray which had to be done at SATA at Jurong East if I wanted an immediate result. If not, the results of the scan would only be available in two to four weeks time. Crazy. I couldn't wait and I was off, alone and limping my way to Jurong East.

If the walk to the Polyclinic was bad then the trip to SATA must be hell. It was like a full 300m or so under the sweltering heat from Jurong East MRT to the SATA clinic. On that day in 2002, it felt like 3km.

As ridiculous as it may sound, I did the X-ray and headed back to the Polyclinic. Back to the doctor I visited in the morning for his diagnosis. I guess you get what you pay for.

"The gap between the tibia and fibula is wider than normal. That suggests a ligament tear which causes the ankle to dislocate since the two bones locking the ankle into place can't do that anymore without the ligament to hold it together," the doctor explained.

"We'll need an operation."

It sounded bad. I have never had an operation before and I didn't intend to break my duck. 

"Can we avoid the operation and let it heal by itself?" I queried. Apparently as the doctor explained, I could but that would mean I would probably walk with a permanent limp since the two bones may not align correctly when the ligament does regenerate by itself. Again crazy. I had to go under the knife.

I got another referral to Alexandra Hospital which was on the following Monday. That makes it eight days after my injury and nothing had been done on my damaged leg. 

Monday finally came and the doctor took a look at my X-rays and offered his opinion.

"It's rare to get an injury that bad from football."

"What we'll do is to put your ankle back in place and align the tibia and fibula together with a screw through the two bones. As the injury was almost a week ago, we'll have to scrap off the clot that would have formed on the torn ligament. With the screw in place, the ligament will then regenerate and hold the two bones together." 

Okay, the doctor explained in less crude terms. But that was the gist of the entire procedure. Disheartening.

"Your leg will be in cast and in three months time, we will have another operation to remove the screw. When you have fully recovered, you will only regain back up to 80% of your leg strength though." Thanks doctor. That's comforting.

I was crying inside as I signed the forms for the operation. 

All my life since Primary Three, I had been enjoying the game of my life - football. At that point in time, I felt something in my life died inside me. I thought it was all over. I could never kick a ball again.

"Snap!"

"Fuck," I thought as I curled up on the moist morning grass at Tanglin Pitch. I was barely five minutes into Arrows FC first game of the Sunday League tournament when my right ankle got caught in the turf as I attempted a sliding tackle.

The team had discussed enthusiastically about the tournament the whole week. Like how we intended to add another silverware having captured the previous Fairfield Methodist Past vs Present Tournament title. Like how we are finally playing like a team and going to show the rest what we are capable of.

I was psyched up by the whole pre-tournament talk. On hindsight, I didn't have to go into a sliding tackle that early in the game. My tournament was over in five minutes.

I grimaced in pain as both set of players started crowding around me. The pain was bad but not different from the multiple sprains I had suffered previously. "Gonna be out for another two, three weeks again," I thought to myself as I was carried off the pitch.

 It was to be a day later before I went to the Chinese sinseh. The sinseh lifted my swollen ankle on to his thigh as I bit my lips at every little movement of my wrecked ankle. I remember watching the sinseh bring the ginger near my leg and preparing myself for the agony I was about to be served.

"Argh!!" I let out. The pain is impossible. The ginger had barely been pressed on my ankle and there was no way I could go on with the rub. I can't write more in details because words can't describe that pain. I was in anguish and more.

"This is not a normal sprain, young man. You'd better go to the hospital for an x-ray," the sinseh said as he highlighted the seriousness of my injury to me.

It started to worry me a little now this injury for I have never been to a Chinese sinseh and not let the sinseh finish his treatment, let alone to stop him from starting it. I thought to myself, "deep shit."

It was a Wednesday afternoon in 1992 and probably two months into the new school year. The group of us, about twenty lower sec. boys, had excitedly gathered at the foyer straight after our morning lessons for our biggest test of the year.

The motley crew of us, most of whom still sounded like sweet young girls were scheduled to play a friendly football match against the upper sec. boys that afternoon. Boys who were bigger, stronger and who could start from the furthest end of the field and still beat anyone of us to the ball. David vs Goliath's elder brother, if you would. The match was, I assumed, to boost the morale of the boys who had progressed to upper sec.

It was our first year in secondary level and within that short two months playing for Fairfield Methodist lower sec. football team, we already had a good idea of who's hot and who's not especially since most of us had graduated from the same primary school. In addition to the familiar faces, we had a few Malay boys who were from other primary schools. Typically like most Malays, these boys were good on the ball and so in some very optimistic way at the back of my young mind, I had entertained the thoughts of an upset with these new "signings" in the team.

I was pretty good with the ball in Primary school. I could dribble like Maradona and bend the ball better than Beckham. I felt I could do it all - with a plastic ball. It's a whole new story when I moved to Secondary One though. The ball was probably five times the size of my foot, moved five metres when I tried to bend it and I would leave the ball behind or trip over myself whenever I tried to dribble. I had great difficulty playing with a size 5 leather ball and I did not expect myself to make the starting eleven. And I didn't.

The manager/coach was this bespectacled Chinese teacher whose appearance makes you think he knows Mathematics formulas way better than football formations. He got us seated as he named his line-up and ended his prep talk along the lines of, "let's keep the score low". Great.

It was like 13-0 when my moment of glory came in the second half. I was going in as a right-sided midfielder in our ultra negative formation of 5-5-0. It took a while for me to get into the game and when I got my first touch of the ball five minutes after I had come on, there was only one thought on my mind - go for goal.

I dribbled the ball into the opponent half unchallenged, skipped past one tackle and had a upper sec. snob chase my shadow. Just as swiftly as I had bombed forward, I was adjudged to be unfairly hacked down as I neared the penalty box. I had earned my team our first freekick in the opponent half and I had led our first real attack. I had at last found my feet.