FOCus
StandingTall
By Farhan Shah
For most of us, it’s a
time for celebration. For
Noraini Adnan, a lady with
cerebral palsy, she’s just
thankful to be alive to
enjoy this time together
with her family.
Speaking with Noraini over the phone is
quite the treat. The enthusiasm in her
voice is infectious, as though it’s the
first time she’s having a conversation
with someone over Bell’s invention.
We met on a searing afternoon at The
Fabulous Baker Boy Café, a cosy hideyhole at the bottom of The Foothills.
As I opened the glass doors of the place,
I immediately recognised Noraini, not
by the motorised wheelchair that she
uses to get around in, but by the radiant
smile that broke out when she saw me.
I would imagine it’s the same grin that
appears on her face each time she uses
her mobile phone.
Any lesser
mortal would
have been
crushed by the
immense
pressure.
Noraini’s
parents, spurred
by a combination
of love,
devotion and
responsibility,
persevered.
Noraini Adnan is 41-years-young with
a healthy head of hair with eyes that
sparkle when she talks about the
different responsibilities that she’s
currently handling.
Noraini also has cerebral palsy, the
result of a severe case of jaundice that
struck her down when she was only
three days old. “My parents had to rush
me to the hospital for an urgent blood
transfusion and were sick with worry.
They were incredibly thankful when I
survived,” says Noraini.
During the next few months following
the scare, Noraini’s parents went about
with their lives, working hard in the day
before happily returning back home
in the evening. It was everything they
dreamt of: the HDB equivalent of white
picket fences.
It was not to be.
A year after she took her first few
breaths, Noraini was still finding it
difficult to sit up without the assistance
of her parents. Speaking also proved to
be hard and when the doctor diagnosed
Noraini with cerebral palsy, her
parents’ world crumbled.
The word “cerebral” refers to the area in the brain or the cerebrum
that is affected while “palsy” means complete or partial muscle
paralysis. The cerebrum is responsible for memory, ability to learn,
and communication skills, so when the cerebrum is damaged, it might
lead to cerebral palsy.
Scientists have discovered that cerebral palsy usually occurs in the
first six months of the pregnancy and is due to three possible reasons:
1. Damage of the brain’s white matter
2. Abnormal development of the brain
3. Bleeding in the brain due to stroke
12
Family & Life • Dec 2013/Jan 2014
“But, they picked themselves up off
the ground and carried on, trying to
give me a normal life as much as
possible,” says Noraini. It was a long
and uphill trek, punctuated with three
painful surgeries – physically for
Noraini and mentally for her parents.
Any lesser mortal would have been
crushed by the immense pressure.
Noraini’s parents, spurred by a
combination of love, devotion and
responsibility, persevered. And they
never believed in hiding Noraini from
the world. Instead, they brought her
grocery shopping, took her on short
holidays and allowed her to play with
her cousins.
“My cousin Juwanda dropped me
once,” says Noraini, giggling at the
roughhousing memory. She was
eight, her cousin just a year younger,
and they were on a grocery run at the
neighbourhood supermarket. “Do you
remember that incident, Juwanda?”
Noraini asks her cousin, the fabulous
baker boy.
Juwanda, one year younger than
Noraini, mocks a sigh. “She IS such
a drama queen. The truth is, I was
pushing her wheelchair, and we were
running around and having fun, when
she fell off the chair onto the ground.
Instead of helping her, I just laughed.
And she, too, started laughing!”
“You see! He didn’t help me
immediately!”
It was an exchange that no one
else would have dared to have with
Noraini, for fear of being offensive.
But, the bond the duo has developed
with each other since young gives
Juwanda an insight into Noraini’s life
that no one knows – he understands
that ultimately, Noraini just wants
to be treated normally like everyone
else, good-natured insults included.
The both of them share a longrunning vacuum cleaner gag, when
Juwanda first told the café’s staff
that Noraini would be attaching
a hoover to the wheels of her
motorised wheelchair and would
begoing around the café to clean
the floor.
The employees were, according
to Juwanda, slightly aghast and
momentarily thought that the
bespectacled baker was dead serious.
“She has to earn her keep! She can’t
keep coming here to eat my cakes for
free,” Joowanda said to me. Noraini
breaks out into riotous laughter upon
hearing that.
These moments of levity with her
close family member during the
interview indicates how Noraini
approaches life, despite being thrown
a multitude of setbacks that she’s
had to overcome. The three major
operations that she was subjected
to, the passing of her biological
mother when she was 18, the
numerous stares she received from
the members of the public when she
headed out with her parents – they’re
experiences that have shaped her
into the independent and spirited
woman she is today.
Noraini too was in a position to
create history when she was 14,
after she was selected to be the
first student with a disability to
be admitted into the mainstream
school system. At that time, she was
studying in the Spastic Children’s
Association. Unfortunately, during
that period, she was suffering from
excruciating back spasms that
would leave her immobile. The
condition meant she was unable to
accept the offer.
It was only two years later that
she met a renowned paediatric
neurologist who managed to keep
the spasms under control with
medication, some of which she’s
still taking now, almost 30 over
years later.
But, Noraini is not one to dwell on
the past. Instead, she attacks the
present with gusto and has kept
herself busy, involving herself in a
laundry list of activities to champion
the disabled cause.
And when she’s not busy scooting
around in her motorised wheelchair
to be the voice of the less fortunate,
she meets her father, whom she’s
still very close to, for a spot of
coffee and heads to her cousin’s
café to scare the new employees
with made-up tales of the
wheelchair-hoover hybrid.
The enthusiasm never wanes and, of
course, the smile never leaves her face.