“It’s better to be lucky than good.”
When I asked my mom about the incident that left me bloody and scarred when I was one year old, she chose to conclude her story with these words. I don’t blame her. When a three-by-four-foot solid glass pane whacks you in the face and explodes into a million razor-sharp pieces before you can recite your ABCs, it helps to have a bit of luck on your side.
I used to live in Singapore, a tiny island nation off the coast of Malaysia, a sort of sweltering, tropical paradise on earth. Unlike my parents, I was not born there, but I did live there as a toddler during the short interim in which my parents were deciding whether to stay and raise me in Singapore, where their families and friends lived, or to move to the US in search of new opportunities. They ended up choosing the latter, trading in chicken rice and satays for water ice and pizza.
One day, my dad was out of town for a conference. My mom was thus charged with the duty of looking after me, a scrappy, barely postnatal ball of pure energy. As she never fails to let me know, my behavior tended to be on the more hyperactive side; I loved to run around and wriggle into places I didn’t belong, all the while screaming my head off like a banshee on amphetamines. She would give me fruit-flavored popsicles to pacify me, but my thirst for blood was insatiable. I would claw, scratch, and pinch my mom while she carried me, leaving marks in my tireless search for self-stimulation. But, as she would admit later to me, she didn’t mind my behavior too much. She endured my rabid assaults on her mental and physical well-being with her love. Somehow.
In the kitchen stood a small, pink mini-fridge. On top sat a glass pane, placed just high enough off the ground to hang over my squishy head. Whether through divine intervention or plain human curiosity, I approached the glass pane and grabbed it with my grubby hands. Then, using my body as a counterweight and the edge of the fridge as a fulcrum, I levered the pane off its resting place and flipped it directly onto my face. The pane shattered with a sickening crash, sending shards into my body.
My mom rushed over to see me, lying in a field of shimmering glass, blood streaming down my face. She sprung into action. She had no way of contacting my dad, so she swooped me up and took me herself to the National University Hospital’s emergency room, praying that I would be alright.
She entrusted my care to the doctors, who wrapped me up tightly in a papoose to hold me still during the extraction and suturing. First, the plastic surgeon extracted a large piece of glass from my forehead, which left a horizontal scar behind my bangs. Next, he moved onto a pointy shard that had embedded itself deep into my left eye socket, missing my eye and optic nerve by mere millimeters. Finally, the team removed any other shards in my face, arms, and hands, leaving the tiny keloid formations that punctuate my skin today. They let me go that same night. According to my mom, I began running around the emergency room and laughing, blissfully ignorant of what had just happened. With a lighter heart, she recaptured jubilant me and went back home to rest.
Looking back, I am left with absurd, unpleasant thoughts. Had I shifted my weight differently on that day, the huge splinter that had lodged itself directly next to my eye would instead have landed head-on. As I look around the room, I close my left eye and try to imagine what life would be like had fate chosen a different path for me. Morbid thoughts aside, I am grateful for my excellent care in the ER. The glass shard that, by chance, almost severed my optic nerve was removed, with skill, between small metal tweezers. The surgeon was quick, thorough, and precise—he was good, but perhaps even more importantly, I was lucky. As my mom says, I should thank my guardian angels more often.
* * *
I never consciously felt the weight of my own mortality until I was about seven. My family had decided to take a day trip to Presque Isle, a beautiful state park situated on a peninsula and completely surrounded by the sparkling blue waters of Lake Erie. That morning, I had hopped into the car with all my swimming gear ready to go, followed by my younger brother and mom, who caressed my baby sister in her arms. My dad, equipped with a gigantic, dusty atlas, would be our trusty driver-navigator during our two-hour-long escape from Pittsburghian suburbia.
I was excited to make some waves. I had taken swim lessons growing up, and it was one of the few things that I felt passionately about. I especially enjoyed the visceral experience of being in the water. I would occasionally take a breath, titrate the amount of air in my lungs, and when it was perfect with respect to my body weight and volume, submerge myself and float, quietly suspended in space. I enjoyed this hermetic sanctuary. I liked how the rest of the world melted away, smoothly distorted by underwater currents, allowing you to direct your focus inward. It was contemplative, and it was peaceful, though only for a couple seconds. Everybody has to claw their way back up to the surface for air eventually.
Even competitive swimming evokes a certain kind of zen. Off the shore of Presque Isle Beach, I was practicing laps without lane lines. This involved swimming in a drunken, sort-of back-and-forth way, my off-kilter path only interrupted by my dad lumbering around in the shallow end. As water crashed against my head, projecting static into my eardrums, I directed my focus inward and coupled my movements to the hypnotic rhythm of freestyle: right arm, left arm, breathe, right arm, left arm, breathe. It felt good.
And I was cocky. Just over the horizon, I happened to spot a string of neon orange buoys about 50 feet from shore, warning swimmers not to go past—finally, a challenge! I rerouted my course and made a beeline toward the distant margin. Right, left, breathe. I began to kick harder, and I noticed the shelf below me moving deeper and deeper as I proudly skimmed along. Right, left, breathe. The buoys were approaching quickly, and my heart was racing, two beats to every stroke. Right, left, breathe. Almost there! Right, left, breathe. Right, left—
This is where my account diverges from my dad’s. To my dad, I was only under the water for a few seconds. But to me, it felt like an eternity.
My adrenaline-soaked mind barely even registered the tangle of seaweed that had caught onto my ankle. Without warning, the seaweed became taut, quickly pulling me downward into the suffocating expanse. Slimy lake plants ensnared my legs, restricting my movement. Panic set in as I realized that I needed to take a breath. A terrible feeling gripped my stomach, and it suddenly felt like imaginary walls were closing in on me. I desperately kicked my legs and flailed my arms around, expending precious energy trying to find a solid foothold. But, there was none. This was no pool. There were no mosaic-tiled walls or floors that I could possibly use to propel myself to safety. That day, I learned that you can’t push off a plant.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t alone. My dad acted quickly, reaching down into the murky lake water and releasing me from my seaweed prison. The second I resurfaced, he asked me if I was alright, to which I responded with a string of wheezing noises as I ravenously filled my lungs with air. Still pumped with adrenaline, I turned around, swam straight back to shore, and leaped out of the water. My mom rushed over to me, and I decided to take a little break from swimming for the rest of the day.
To this day, I can still remember that awful feeling in my gut. The feeling of needing to breathe. The guilt of succumbing to my own hubris. The morbid epiphany that maybe, this was it, in Lake Erie of all places. You know, that sinking feeling.
* * *
I am now 22 years old, going on 23, and I’ve settled nicely into a routine.
I wake up an hour before small group starts, have some granola and milk for breakfast (whole only), walk to and from JMEC, maybe find a coffee shop to work and study at, return home, and contemplate going to lecture the next day before sighing, saying “it is what it is,” and setting my alarm clock for ten a.m. the next day. It’s a comfortable life.
That’s not completely true. I actually haven’t been all too comfortable since the start of this year. In January, a mysterious spot of searing inflammation on the back of my head gave me headaches so severe that the second my train got back into Philly that night, I called an Uber straight to the HUP emergency room. In February, I acquired an excruciating case of strep throat that caused me to sit for hours at my desk, quietly disassociating from the sheer amount of pain. In March, I contracted norovirus near the end of my first trip to Europe, and surprised myself by violently throwing up on the plane in front of a Peruvian lady. Now, it’s almost April.
I am not a superstitious person. I try my best to make sense out of all the absurdity and to process it in a way that I can make peace with. However, I can think of no explanation, save for “bad luck,” that explains why so many different, unrelated illnesses have plagued me this year. I don’t even know why a younger me deserved to experience such intense pain, fear, and regret. I resign and admit: bad things can happen for no good reason.
But there is a positive side to this coin. The realization that I have so little control over the worst that can happen to my health is as scary as it is invigorating. The fragility and wild capriciousness of life give me reason to embrace vitality and live fully. It is a reminder to be true to myself and my emotions. It pushes me to break past apathy and anxiety. It compels me to reach out to loved ones when I am in need, and to help and spend quality time with them in turn. I struggle, every single day, to come out of my shell. But I try my best.
Today, I have found a seat at Alchemy Coffee, which — let’s be real — is good luck in itself. To me, a coffee shop is a place of refuge, a safe haven from the cold clinicality of the medical education center. I love the floating notes of chocolate, honey, and hazelnut. The stimulatory clicking of keystrokes and ice cubes. The feeling of transient integration as people float in and out. The warm, idle chatter about everything under the sun. Here I am, musing about mortality over a piping hot cup o’ drip. Perhaps Brain & Behavior has finally gotten to me.
I sit in the coffee shop, reflect, and write nonetheless. I capture mental fuzz and lay it on the page. I think about my family and make a note: call mom and dad later. I recall those mystery illnesses and smile; how did they all miraculously resolve with no lingering symptoms? I look at my class notes and see a dim reflection of myself in the smooth, glass screen. I imagine a younger me, and wonder if he’d be surprised to see how I’ve mellowed out over the years.
Not to worry, little guy. I’m still stumbling around, falling and laughing as I go.
Ian Ong is an MS1 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
Art by Yuchen Chen, an MS3 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
