The daughter of late Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Wei Ling, took to Facebook on Sep. 3 to detail her experience getting lost in Fort Canning Park and suffering an injury.
At around 8pm on Jul. 5, 2020, Lee was walking alone in Fort Canning Park when she got lost. She realised that she had made a wrong turn, ending up at a "cul de sac near a cemetery" next to the YMCA building.
Fractured a bone
That was when Lee heard a snapping sound and felt a sharp pain in her right thigh when she took a step.
Lee realised that she had fractured her right femur, a bone within the human thigh. This happened at around 8pm, according to Lee.
"Instinctively I knew I fractured my right femur from a similar experience more than a decade ago. I fell on my back and when I tried to turn prone to crawl back to the path, bone end rubbed against bone end and all the thigh muscles went into spasm in a ball around the fracture site. My ability to Ren(忍) or put up with the pain was overwhelmed."
She tried to call out to her dog, Hiro, and her helper, Darmi, however, she was "met by dead silence".
Lee also considered finding a stone to toss at a third storey window of the YMCA building, but doubted that she could toss a stone that high.
Lee also realised that there was no way she could make her way down the "very steep" flight of steps she went up.
Not afraid
However, Lee had faith that in Singapore, "no one can remain lost for long".
She was found by policemen at around 2am while "waiting in the damp dank soil", approximately six hours after the fall:
"I was not afraid after all this is Singapore where no one can remain lost for long. I was delighted when a group of policemen turned up with torchlights looking for me. I have never been happier to see our men in navy blue uniforms before. They too were delighted to see me as their task was to find me."
Without hesitation, she told the policemen to take her to Singapore General Hospital (SGH) A&E, which Lee describes as "Singapore’s premier hospital" where she has been treated at "over many years".
She also commended the ambulance crew for their timely response:
"The ambulance crew appeared very promptly and my fracture was immediately immobilised. Once that was done there was no more pain and I was strapped into a stretcher and expertly and promptly transported down the steep steps."
"Outcome could have been much worse"
Lee said that the outcome could have been much worse and "instead of cursing [her] bad luck [she] was grateful to emerge with no more than a fractured femur."
She added that there were small black ants crawling all over her.
She ended her post by showing her appreciation for the police, ambulance staff and the doctors and nurses:
"All in all, I thanked my lucky stars. I am grateful to the police who found me, the ambulance staff who immobilised my leg, and took me to hospital, and the doctors and nurses who looked after me while I was warded."
View the full post here:
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Top photo via Lee Wei Ling on Facebook and Google Maps