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Recuperation from a spinal injury takes time and patience - things that have never been resonant in my mind before.

As a journalist for the past three decades, I have punished my body to the max. Sitting on uncomfortable chairs or benches for hours on end trying to file stories, forgetting to grab a lunch or missing dinner, not to mention having many sleepless nights. I realised too late a body constantly caught in those kinds of conditions, especially sitting in the same position for hours, can be fatal. I should have known this long ago. But once you are into your writing, sitting on a chair, trying to finish your article, you tend to forget this basic rule.

In the early morning of July 1, I paid a very high price for three decades of complacency about my physical well-being. I woke up at 4.30am and sought to write about US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's upcoming trip to Thailand, for the Asean ministerial meeting in Phuket. When I reached my table with a laptop computer, my two arms suddenly stopped functioning. I could not move them at all. I was scared as hell. What had happened to me? I feared I would not be able to use my hands and legs ever again.

The first two weeks in hospital were mind-numbing - a hellish experience. My life was transformed because I was unable to write, walk or even take a pee. The first four days I had no food or water, except a liquid drip. My lips were so dry they were like the skin of salted fish in local markets. During that period, teams of doctors had to determine the cause of my illness. As it turned out, it took 22 days to determine that my sudden collapse was due to spinal inflammation, or acute transverse myelitis (ATM, but not the bank card variety that gives you cash).

The day before this happened I was working on a report, writing for five hours in an armchair at a conference with little movement or change of posture. ATM causes dysfunction of everything below the chest. My arms, legs, bowel and bladder all stopped working. Some doctors said I had just been unlucky because not many people suffer from this syndrome. I had never been admitted to a hospital before and my health record was excellent.

For the first time in my life I was confined to a bed for 24 hours a day, for almost a month. I was constantly thinking of my body, which was numb from the chest down. I wanted to break away from a body that suddenly seemed frozen. Throughout the past three months, my whole abdomen felt like it was sandwiched between thick steel plates held together by long iron nails at the four corners. One minute I thought I could move, the next I realised I could not. It became very frustrating. But after two and a half months, I am feeling much better, as I have been able to practise walking with a cane. The next challenge is toilet training.

Have you ever gone to bed with most of your body immobile or partly paralysed? With such a condition, it was extremely hard to sleep. Once you close your eyes, you think parts of your arms and legs are leaving your body, and flying away. I felt compelled to constantly keep my eyes open and watch my arms and legs, to make sure they were still there, attached. It was eerie, like watching a horror movie.

I literally could not sleep for over two weeks. My eyes were puffed up and looked liked the dark circles around Lin Ping's eyes, the baby panda at Chiang Mai Zoo.

Throughout my ordeal, two one-hour sessions of physical therapy were part of my daily routine. To be able to function normally again, I had to stretch and strengthen my muscles. I have to do a lot of exercises now - something I had not done enough of when I was healthy.

It has been an amazing and painful experience, trying to build up my arms and legs. Once your arms and legs stop "motoring" (moving), their muscles immediately acquire a marshmallow-like softness. It took several weeks to reactivate them. It took five weeks, for instance, to move my right toe up and down just a few millimetres!

The whole experience was like piling up sesame seeds one on another to generate this tiny amount of energy so that when there was finally enough piled together they would somehow energise later. In the next few weeks, I have to build up all these sesame seeds of energy so that my body can move and I can return to a more normal life.

Five months have elapsed. I am grateful to my family, relatives and friends for their loving care. Well-wishes and prayers from friends both at home and afar were powerful and yielded wonderful healing power at the most difficult time.

Special thanks go to Nattaporn and Vilasinee, the two physical therapists at Bhumibol Hospital who have tirelessly urged me to do more exercises despite all my tearful pain and screaming. Nattaporn said I should be able to jog with her soon.

One lucky thing is that I was admitted to a state hospital. It is not a perfect hospital but it saves lots of lives everyday. On a fine day, the hospital's elevator No 8 would get stuck; certain nights there were blackouts or leaking air-conditioners. After midnight do not go inside elevator No 5, as quite a few nurses have glimpsed a female ghost.

Beyond that, it has very good doctors and caretakers, with good camaraderie, who are willing to work for the common good, not financial reward. It appears that all of them are overworked and underpaid.

Doctors here are available most of the time at no extra cost - for no doctor's fee. I even had my teeth fixed (three fillings), on the house. Believe it or not, here it costs only one-twentieth of the estimated cost to recuperate over a similar period in a private hospital.

My journey of recovery will continue in the future. I have plenty of time to look back on what I have done. I have gained new insights and meaning in my life. I have to be more patient with myself and do things that seem impossible at first (such as moving your 90-kilogram body),

 because they are possible in the end.

By the way, when is the next deadline?