Wednesday 4 June 2008

Pins and Needles

Last night the landlord’s driver came to drop off the tenancy contract papers of our apartment.

The landlord, an old Arab depends on this driver to act as interpreter. A Pakistani by nationality, the driver is a course-looking man who acts more like the landlords personal assistant than his driver. While he was explaining some Arabic stuff written on the paper to my husband, I noticed a safety pin in his mouth. My eyes zoomed in on just the PIN and watched with a sort of morbid fascination the pin moving up & down while he was talking. I wanted to tell him to take it out but he was talking so fast and explaining some stuff to my husband. Just then the kids came out to see who was at the door, I took them back in & by the time I went back to the door he was gone. I fervently hoped he didn’t swallow the pin.

This reminded me of an incident which happened when I was 6yrs old. It was around 8pm. I was sitting with my mom in the bedroom; she was sitting on a chair & and I was sitting on the wooden post at the edge of the bed. I had this safety pin in my mouth which I was opening & closing with my teeth. My fingers were lightly holding the pin at the edge for support. My mom was talking & I was intently listening to her when all of a sudden the electricity went off. I fell backwards onto the bed in shock & in the process swallowed the pin. Gosh I still remember that moment & my thoughts so clearly….

“Mummy, I am doing to die” I remember saying.

“Don’t worry, It’s only the electricity. Let me light a candle”

“No ma, I swallowed a safety pin” I said, all the while waiting to crash on the floor and die.

“WHAT?” my mother roared.

But before she went to get the candle, the electricity came back on and my father also came back from office. Together they searched the entire room for the safety pin incase it fell on the floor by mistake.

My father took me to the hospital where they took an x-ray and the pin was clearly outlined in the intestine. By God's Grace the pin was closed. The doc gave me a lecture about how serious the consequences could have been, had the pin been opened. The doc, then prescribed a diet of Bananas for the next week & he hoped the pin came out the natural way. I ofcourse was quite disappointed with the whole outcome. Clearly I wasn’t satisfied with the near-death experience.

After 3 days my mom fished out a discolored safety-pin out of the poop and yes they still have that X-ray stashed away. Every time they are searching for something, they are sure to come across this film & ofcourse they stop to reminisce about the incident.

Another time, my mother was stitching up a slipper with a BEEG needle & green twine when the fishman hollered from outside “Meeeeeeeeen, Meeeeen”. In her hurry to catch the fishman, she left the needle sticking up from the slipper right in the corridor and I ofcourse stamped right on the needle, hard. 3/4th of the needle went up my sole & my vocals cords lost their restraint. My mother immediately guessed what must have happened and came tearing in. But I wouldnt let her touch my feet for 5 minutes. Finally she pretended to ‘just’ look at how deep it went & yanked it out. I howled in agony and looked down expecting to see a pool of blood. But there was just a tiny spot of red on the sole. After 5 minutes I wanted to show somebody the injury and would you believe it the exact spot where the needle went in couldn’t be located. I was so hopping mad(pun intended).

But there was another incident which did not end happily. We had a German Shepherd named Toothie who swallowed an extra large marble(the normal playing marble, only a size bigger) while playing. When she fell sick, we took an x-ray & found this marble near the mouth of the small intestine. We fed her so much bananas that she must have thought all her Christmases came at once. After 2 weeks we took 1 more x-ray & this time the marble was wedged inside more firmly. The doctors offered no hope & told us to put her to sleep but we brought her back home & persevered. Nothing worked. She died exactly a month after she swallowed the marble. We buried her in the corner of our garden. It broke our hearts, u see she was our first pet.

Even now all these 3 things give me a very uneasy feeling no matter who is handling it. I try to keep the 1st two items just for necessity sake and the 3rd item is banned in the house along with chewing gum.

Chewing gum????????? That’s another story.

Just kidding, its not. Its something my husband thinks, is not safe to eat…for the kids atleast.

16 comments:

  1. Ouch! that sounds painful.. really... sp the safety pin bit
    and i remember once bringing the house down, just bcus i had swallowed a lichi seed.:)
    ur posts always bring back some memory

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  2. I did not swallow anything but wen i was lil the hook of my earing just went inside my ear and it hurt like hell, everyone at the house were so worried, but it hardly took a minute for the doc to insert a tong and pull it out, then everyone thought i was being a drama queen coz the doc said it wasnt anything major these things happen more than you think :(
    I agree with ISH, honestly your post always bring back memories

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  3. just as I finished reading this blog, Neha began crying. She said a toy hurt her. I thought she was kidding. Told her I'll beat the toy for hurting her. It was Neela's office badge with an open safety pin. Nothing happened though. Was it a sign?

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  4. ISH: ur lichi seed incident reminds me of when I swallowed a lemon seed & my mom told me that a lemon tree will grow out of my mouth. I really got scared and kept waitng for the tree to sprout out thru my mouth:-(.

    Sunshine:It may not be a gr8 issue but in the mind of a child the whole incident is magnified & they keep imagining the worst...like an operation or something. Dont blame u 1 bit for making a hungama:-D

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  5. Thank God u chked it out. Many times we just overlook it & it ends into something else.
    I'll never forget Neha stuffing tissue into her nose when u visited us last....Do u remember:-D?

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  6. wow, lucky that it was closed. my neighbor's kid once swallowed a handful of ant powder once. he had his stomach pumped after that.

    no pins for me, i accidentally let my toe get stuck between the cycle chain and the sprocket. one of the spiked thingies went straight through my toenail. had no trouble spotting the injury at that point :|

    i have a marble collection :) small ones, big ones, blue ones, green ones, a LOT of them! n i luv gum too! poor kiddos!!!

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  7. g-man: Even I had a lovely marble collection...the envy of many boys in the locality. Among them I had 2marvellous oversized marbles which nobody else had. My dog swallowed one of the oversized ones & died:-(
    Actually the box of marbles are still there....stashed away..out of sight, somewhere in my parents house.

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  8. This is the reason we are very carefulk with the pins and needles. Once my daughter was eating coconut and it stuck in her throat, withing seconds she went blue, my husband ---he just started crying,suddenly god made me put a finger in her throat and I dont remember whether it came out or went in, but she came back to us. from that day onward mu H wouldnt let anybody eat raw coconut in our home:)
    we have so many similar memories, sometimes I wonder why?

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  9. Renu: Gosh I cant even begin to imagine wht u must have gone thru. Lucky ur brain worked in that critical moment.

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  10. Hey.. I stumbled upon this post by accident. You won't believe - My younger brother swallowed a safety pin once and it was extracted in the same way. Another time, the dentist dropped a pin while doing RCT for my brother. Painful incidents then! My brother runs a mile when he sees a pin ;-)

    --Rohitha
    http://sothisishowyoublog.blogspot.com/

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  11. lostworld: sorry, didnt get tht....the dentist dropped a pin where?????

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  12. The dentist dropped a pin inside my brother's mouth.. It went through his food pipe and was extracted by feeding him a dozen bananas .. Truly a traumatic experience for all of us. We filed a case in consumer court and won it of course.

    I was a schoolgirl and I was reminded of those days when I read your post :)

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  13. Ohmigosh........I cant begin to imagine wht ur parents must have gone thru. This pin was a safety pin or something else?????

    Everybody has atleast 1 memory like this;-)....infact ur brother's story reminded me of an incident I had almost forgotten abt....I stuffed a peanut into my nose....my mother panicked...the quick-witted neighbour made me sneeze & it came out;-P

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  14. Hehehe.. very true :)

    This pin was not a safety-pin. More like the fat pin used for stitching!
    I had noticed you visited my blog and read my story. I have completed Part2. I'd like it if you read and let me know what you think :)

    Have a nice day!

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