I think Oscar Wao left me some of his fuku, because this trip has been a bloody adventure. LITERALLY. Yesterday's snorkeling adventure involved many marine sightings, including the big excitement of the trip: a sea turtle. (Yes, it is possible to coo underwater.) Unfortunately, at the second snorkel stop, there were sharks and stingrays. They didn't make me nervous, but an angry moray eel did, and its snakelike appearance made me swim away a little less carefully than I had earlier in the day. Leg, meet coral. Leg, meet pain.
All of the travel-book warnings talk about how if left untreated, coral scrapes can become infected and then your leg swells up and they have to cut it off but you wind up dying anyway, all because you are scared of eels. But I decided to stop worrying and get on with life.
This smug satisfaction lasted for less than 24 hours. I decided to take a clothed swim. Clothed because, despite my freakish reapplication of sunblock yesterday, my back is the color of a lobster. (We saw lobsters while snorkeling, too.) It hurts and I'm too cheap to spend $13 US on aloe vera gel. Anyway, I was very careful while floating around the Caribbean. Didn't want to step on starfish (can they hurt you?) and so I'd look through the clear water before putting my feet anywhere.
Until, of course, the point at which I really should have been careful.
I crawled onto the concrete barrier that separated the sea from a little inlet, and oh, looky there, a mini angelfish or something similarly cute and bright! And oh my god, what was that? Pain! In staring at the fish, I'd forgotten that the concrete was jagged in places. I thought it was just a scratch, so I went back to fish-watching until I noticed that the water was getting cloudy. I moved my foot and a bright red blot of blood stained the sand. Shit shit shit. Blood everywhere! Oh god, sharks, they're going to come for me and someone else will get bitten and it will all be my fault! Etc.
I limped back to my lodging, dripping an impressive amount of blood all the way. Blood flowed over my flip-flop, leaving a little trail of blood behind me. "Did you step on a nail?" the proprietor asked. I don't know, I just bleed here. "You should get a tetanus shot if it was a nail," she said.
I bicycled to the store, where the clerk spoke only a few words of English, and I didn't know how to say "Do you have Neosporin?" in Chinese. (After scouring the entire store, I can report that they do not have Neosporin.) Cleaned the wound with alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, began thinking of the clerk's tetanus question, and went to the guest house's computer to IM Scott about whether he thinks I need to get a shot. He is the one who taught me how to properly clean a wound this past summer, and when I bleed, I think of him.
So. Off to the clinic. I'd like to pretend that I'm super cool and laid-back about this, but instead, each painful throb at the wound site is another sign that I'll need to be airlifted to the States. (Each word written here is another way to fill the time before the clinic closes, because guess who is terrified of a tetanus shot?)
All of the travel-book warnings talk about how if left untreated, coral scrapes can become infected and then your leg swells up and they have to cut it off but you wind up dying anyway, all because you are scared of eels. But I decided to stop worrying and get on with life.
This smug satisfaction lasted for less than 24 hours. I decided to take a clothed swim. Clothed because, despite my freakish reapplication of sunblock yesterday, my back is the color of a lobster. (We saw lobsters while snorkeling, too.) It hurts and I'm too cheap to spend $13 US on aloe vera gel. Anyway, I was very careful while floating around the Caribbean. Didn't want to step on starfish (can they hurt you?) and so I'd look through the clear water before putting my feet anywhere.
Until, of course, the point at which I really should have been careful.
I crawled onto the concrete barrier that separated the sea from a little inlet, and oh, looky there, a mini angelfish or something similarly cute and bright! And oh my god, what was that? Pain! In staring at the fish, I'd forgotten that the concrete was jagged in places. I thought it was just a scratch, so I went back to fish-watching until I noticed that the water was getting cloudy. I moved my foot and a bright red blot of blood stained the sand. Shit shit shit. Blood everywhere! Oh god, sharks, they're going to come for me and someone else will get bitten and it will all be my fault! Etc.
I limped back to my lodging, dripping an impressive amount of blood all the way. Blood flowed over my flip-flop, leaving a little trail of blood behind me. "Did you step on a nail?" the proprietor asked. I don't know, I just bleed here. "You should get a tetanus shot if it was a nail," she said.
I bicycled to the store, where the clerk spoke only a few words of English, and I didn't know how to say "Do you have Neosporin?" in Chinese. (After scouring the entire store, I can report that they do not have Neosporin.) Cleaned the wound with alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, began thinking of the clerk's tetanus question, and went to the guest house's computer to IM Scott about whether he thinks I need to get a shot. He is the one who taught me how to properly clean a wound this past summer, and when I bleed, I think of him.
So. Off to the clinic. I'd like to pretend that I'm super cool and laid-back about this, but instead, each painful throb at the wound site is another sign that I'll need to be airlifted to the States. (Each word written here is another way to fill the time before the clinic closes, because guess who is terrified of a tetanus shot?)
Do not use rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, iodine, or mercurochrome, which can harm the tissue and slow healing.
http://firstaid.webmd.com/tc/cuts-home-treatment
So, this was posted four days ago, and no further updates. I sure hope that's because you're busy having a great time in Belize and not because you've had a medical airlift back to the States!...
Ha! Thank you for your notes. I've just been busy and staying away from the computer. Toe is healing, but of course I hurt my hand yesterday while caving. If I have time, I'll try to squeeze in one more injury before returning. There's always kiteboarding...