After a short discussion at her teacher’s desk, Lohsshini had walked back to her seat clutching a sheet of paper but found herself clumsily falling to the floor with a thud when her chair was pulled away from behind just as she was about to sit.

There was a momentary silence before a roar of laughter echoed throughout the classroom. Embarrassed and upset at being the centre of a prank, Lohsshini scrambled to her feet, disregarding the searing pain shooting up her spine.

“I went back to focussing on my studies as I was sitting for UPSR that year,” Lohsshini, today 19 years old, told FMT.

Her mother however, was gravely concerned when told what happened. Having suffered from the pain of a slipped disc herself, she insisted Lohsshini get an X-ray done immediately.

“However, my physician told me that there wasn’t anything to worry about and prescribed some painkillers,” she recalled. Later, when she experienced intermittent back pain, she dismissed it as a symptom of premenstrual syndrome.

Life went on and she began playing netball in secondary school. “Then one day, as I was helping my mother move gym equipment, I felt a pull in my leg and back. But I brushed it off,” she recalled.

Less than a week later, she was helping move benches in the school canteen when the pain started building up in her lower back again. And later, she realised she was unable to walk in a straight line, and was walking sideways instead.

Within a few hours, she was admitted to a hospital emergency ward and according to Lohsshini, the results of an MRI scan revealed that she had a slipped disc at the L5/S1 spinal segment.

“I remember feeling like my whole world came crumbling down. If I didn’t see my mother suffering from a slipped disc, it would have been different. Then I started crying as I was only 13 years old, and I wanted to become an athlete.”

When asked if she had had a fall, she told her doctor about the prank.

“The doctor was confident that was the particular moment that my journey with spinal injury started,” she said, adding that her doctor also discovered multiple bulges in her neck.

When the pain of continued stiff necks and leg cramps became unbearable, she had no choice but to withdraw from the netball team she so loved.

An innocent prank

Despite these health setbacks, Lohsshini was picked as part of the Malaysian delegation to the US in the Southeast Asia Youth Leadership Programme in 2019.

She also scored 9As in her SPM and was accepted into a foundation programme at a public university.

However, constantly having to take the stairs and walk long distances across campus for her lectures, took its toll on her. She bit her lip and pushed on. However, it all came to a head this year while on holiday.

She recalled how she had bent down to pick up a mouth freshener when it hit. “I felt excruciating pain in my back and down my thighs.”

An X-ray showed she had an annular tear in her L5/S1 spinal segment, which in layman’s terms means a tear in the ligament connecting the vertebra to the earlier slipped disc.

She also learned she had another slipped disc in her L4/L5 spinal segment.

Devastated by these latest developments, Lohsshini almost skipped an interview for acceptance into a medical programme at a public university. But her family and friends were adamant she go as it was her dream to become a doctor.

“It was difficult to go through [the interview] while enduring the pain,” she revealed, although it did pay off as she was accepted into the medical programme.

“Although I am excited, I am also nervous,” she admitted, as she has to be mindful about not sitting for too long or walking too far.

Considering what she has been through at such a young age, one cannot help but wonder if she harbours any resentment towards the prankster.

“I am not angry or disappointed. To put it simply, I am mature enough not to hold a grudge against a 12-year-old.”

Speaking about the number of similar pranks she’s come across on social media platforms like TikTok, she shared, “I get annoyed when I see laughing emojis in the comment section because you don’t know what that could do to the victim.”

She also hopes for greater awareness about spine health among young people. “It’s important to educate them about it so that they will take care of their spine.”