Categories
testimony

Testimony

by Dr. Andrew C S Koh

a photo showing a fireworks display on a dark night with a setting sun over a mountain
Fireworks, sunset

Spinal shock

On 26/12/2019, I attended a post-Christmas, pre-New Year celebration dinner with my cardiologist colleagues in a hotel in Ipoh. After dinner, when I was leaving the restaurant, I tripped and fell. I could not remember how I fall. I must have lost consciousness, and when I came to myself, I saw my friends looking at me and calling me.

I could see and hear them but I had a strange feeling. I could not feel my body below the neck and this was frightening! It was as though my head was cut off from the rest of my body from below my neck. I could not move my hands and feet, and there were no feelings below my neck. Then it dawned on me that I was tetraplegic, and the fall had resulted in a neck injury and spinal shock.

Prolapsed intervertebral disc

My colleagues called for an ambulance and transferred me to KPJ Ipoh Specialist Hospital. The paramedics were very careful not to move my neck and protected my neck with a cervical collar. I was immediately taken for an emergency MRI brain and neck scan and subsequently admitted to the ICU. The MRI scan showed no head trauma, but there was a prolapsed intervertebral at the C3/C4 level causing a 90 % compression of the spinal cord, confirming the diagnosis of a prolapsed intervertebral disc with cervical myelopathy at the C3/C4 level. By then, it was already past midnight.

Spastic tetraplegia

The next morning, I was taken for a CT scan of the neck to delineate the prolapse intervertebral disc in more detail. By then, the spinal shock had resolved but I was tetraplegic. The spinal surgeon who attended to me advised urgent spinal cord decompression surgery to remove the prolapsed intervertebral disc and to decompress the spinal cord. He explained that this was a delicate and precise operation, and there was a risk of permanent spastic tetraplegia in the event of complications arising during the operation.

Spinal Surgery

At 8 pm on 27/12/2019, I was wheeled to the operation theatre for the scheduled operation. I heard the anaesthetists in attendance saying that they were giving me pure oxygen, and will be putting me to sleep. The next thing, that I remembered was the doctors calling my name, asking me to wake up, and saying that the operation was over. When I opened my eyes, I saw the doctors, nurses, paramedics, and the clock in the operation theatre, and it was 11 pm. I was wheeled back to the ICU.

Rehabilitation

After 8 days in the hospital, I was well enough to be discharged and was able to walk with great difficulty using a walking frame. After 6 more weeks of outpatient physiotherapy and rehabilitation, I finally recovered and was discharged from physiotherapy. At that time, the COVID-19 pandemic kicked in, and the whole country was under lockdown. It took me another 3 months before I became ambulant. It is now almost 3 years post operation and I am fully ambulant but still requires the assistance of a walking stick.

Thanks for the support

I thank all my cardiologist colleagues for calling the ambulance and protecting my neck during the ambulance transfer.

I thank my wife, sons, daughters-in-law, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, niece, relatives, in-laws, friends, pastors, church members, ex-school, and ex-university classmates, for their prayers, support, care, visitation, encouragement, and reassurance.

I thank the spinal surgeon, neurosurgeon, neurologist, anaesthetists, radiologists, staff nurses, nursing aides, paramedical staff, radiographers, physiotherapists, KPJ ISH hospital directors, and all the hospital staff, who had attended to me during my hospitalization.

Miracle

According to one of my cardiologist friends who was an eyewitness to the accident, I fell head facing downwards hitting the floor, and was lifeless for about 5 minutes. He said that at that moment, he thought I have died and was so worried for me. When I woke up again, it was a miracle. According to one of my sons, who is an anaesthetist in New Zealand, he said that such an injury almost always results in permanent tetraplegia, and my recovery in such a short time was indeed a miracle.

So many people prayed for me, through whats-app messenger and in person. My wife and sister were very supportive throughout my hospital stay and postoperatively. My in-laws were also very supportive throughout my ordeal. They drove me to various places outside Ipoh during the Chinese New Year of 2020 for food and recreation, just to cheer me up.

Thank God

I thank God for saving my life, rescuing me from spinal shock, rescuing me from spastic tetraplegia, successful spinal surgery, and successful rehabilitation

I thank God for preserving my life so that I can serve Him in the church. For the past 3 years, He had enabled me to write and publish 38 books. God is good, He loved me, had compassion, mercy, and grace on me, and His eyes were on me throughout my ordeal. I had experienced such amazing grace.

Testimony

I was once paralysed but now I can walk! I hope this testimony will be an encouragement for you as it had been for me.

a photo of my business card
business card
Categories
article

How to format an Amazon paperback with Word for Mac

by Dr. Andrew C S Koh

a photo showing an open book
opened book

In this article, I will walk you through the process of how to format a word document into an amazon paperback that is ready to be uploaded to the Amazon bookshelf for publication. If you follow these steps closely, you should be able to format the document. Here, I am using an apple mac book. If you are using windows the steps may be slightly different.

First, type out a clean Microsoft word document.

Highlight the whole document by pressing Command + A. On the Word menu table, click Home, and click Normal. This will clean up your whole document.

Create the following sections for your paperback manuscript

Title

Copyright

Foreword

Preface

Table of Content

Chapters

About the author

Other books by the author

Sections 1 to 5 are the Front matter, section 6 is the Core matter, and sections 7 to 8 are the Back matter.

Setting the trim size and Margins:

On the Apple Word menu, (the top most horizontal blue bar), click Format, select Document from the drop-down menu. Select Margins, enter the Margins in cm for Top, Bottom, Inside, Outside, based on your page count which can be found in the article http://www.amazon.com, “Build your Book, format a paperback manuscript” ( Word for Mac or window). In this article, I am using Word for Mac, using a MacBook, but it should be quite similar if you are using Windows. Follow the margins for no bleed, unless your book has bleed.

Gutter margin, enter 0 (zero)

Pages, Multiple Pages- select mirror margins.

Apply to: whole documents

select OK.

Select Page Setup, Format for, Any Printer.

Paper size: for the trim size of 6 x 9 inches, enter 152 mm x 229 mm. For any other trim sizes enter accordingly.

scale, 100%, Click OK

Apply to the whole document, click OK

Setting Normal style for book body:

On the Word menu, (top horizontal menu bar), click Home, right-click Normal, select Modify from the drop-down menu, set font size to 12, select Format, select Paragraph from the drop-down menu, set alignment to justify, Indentation, left and right to 0 cm, Special, First line By, 0.5 cm, Spacing, Before and After, to 0 pt, Line spacing, to single.

Click OK, twice.

Applying Normal Style to book body:

Place cursor before the first word on the text of the Copyright page, then hold down shift + page down to highlight everything below the cursor. Keep everything highlighted. On Word menu, click Home, Click Normal.

Setting Heading 1 Style:

Click Home, right-click Heading 1, select Modify from the drop-down menu, set Font size to 12, set colour to black, Select Format, select Paragraph from the drop-down menu, set alignment to justified, indentation, left and right, to 0 cm, Special, First line, By, 0.5 cm, Spacing, Before and After, to 0 pt, Line spacing, to Single, Click OK, Twice.

Applying Heading 1 Style:

Apply Heading 1 Style to the Headings of Copyright, Foreword, Preface, all the Chapters, About the author, and Other books by the author.

Highlight the heading of Copyright. Click Home, click Heading 1. Repeat the same steps for the heading of Foreword, Preface, Every Chapter, About the Author, and other books by the Author.

Adding section breaks:

Add a section break after every section.

Place the cursor at the end of the last word on the Title Page. On the Word main menu, click  Layout, click Break, select Next Page from the drop-down menu.

Repeat the same steps for Copyright, Foreword, Preface, Every Chapter, About the Author, and Other books by the Author.

Formatting the Title Page:

Type out the Title, Subtitle, and Author’s name on one page. This is the book’s first page.

Highlight Title. On Apple main menu (top horizontal blue menu bar) click Font, set Font Size to 28, set Font set Style to bold, select OK.

On the Apple menu, click Paragraph, set alignment to centre, indentation, left and right to 0 cm, Special, to none, Spacing before to 32 pt, and After to 16 pt. Click OK.

Highlight subtitle. On Apple main menu, click Font, set font size to 24, set style to italic.

On the Apple menu, click paragraph, set alignment to centre, indentation, left and right to 0 cm, Special, to none, Spacing before to 16 pt, After to 16 pt.

Highlight the author’s name. On Apple main menu, Click Font, set the font size to 20, set style to Normal.

On the Apple menu, Click Paragraph, set alignment to centre, indentation left and right, to 0 cm, Special, to none, Spacing before to 16 pt, After to 0 pt.

Formatting the Copyright page:

Highlight the text of the copyright page and set alignment to centre. Add a call to action below the last line of the text by adding your email link and website links.

On Word menu, click insert, click links, select link, select email address, enter your email address into the box, click OK.

Repeat the same steps, select link, select webpage, enter your blog URL address into the box, click Ok.

Repeat the same steps to add your URL address for Amazon author central page, the URL address of the Facebook page, Instagram page, Twitter page, etc. Test the link to make sure there is no error in the URL addresses! The URL address should start with https://www…….

Formatting Other Books by the Author:

On this page, you can add a call to action by adding the URL links to all your books. The link should start with https://www.amazon.com/dp/B………followed by 9 alphanumeric digits.

Make sure there is no error in the URL addresses!

Adding page numbers:

Place the cursor anywhere on the title page. On Word main menu, click insert, click page number, select page number from the drop-down menu, position to Bottom of the page, Alignment to Centre, select, show number on the first page.

Select Format, Number format, to 1,2,3. Page numbering, to start at 1. Click OK twice. Page numbers will be added to the bottom centre of the page.

Creating a formatted Table of Contents:

This is the final step of the book formatting.

First, create a blank page before Chapter 1. Place the cursor before the first word in the heading of chapter 1.

Click Layout, click Break, select the next page on the drop-down menu.

On the top of the blank page type, Table of Contents.

Highlight Table of Contents.

Click References, click the table of contents, select custom Table of Contents, select- show page number, select- align page number to right, deselect- Use links instead of page numbers. Show levels- select 1. Click OK.

Congratulations!

You have successfully formatted an Amazon paperback print book. Convert this into a pdf format and upload it to the bookshelf, book content when you are uploading your paperback print book.