the scratch-and-dent kid

when i was growing up, my parents referred to me as the "scratch-and-dent kid" since i was inevitably always coming home with some new scratch or wound or bruise or whatever it may be. this characteristic stopped for a while, but i seem to have re-acquired this trait since coming to the philippines.

i say this mostly because i am always coming home all muddied up and with some new blister or scratch on my legs, much to the chagrin of my host family. it makes sense to me – i ride my bike everywhere, there is always mud due to the almost nightly rainstorms, and inevitably, since i am always wandering around outside and in and out of the water and climbing into mangroves and so on that i hurt myself somehow. i was also getting blisters fairly regularly from my shoes and i have a bad habit of scratching mosquito bites until they bleed. i've also had multiple run-ins with jellies and a bad introduction to fire coral (there's a reason it's called that).

problem is ... everything here gets infected if it's open. or at least this seems to be my problem. and you don't really want to use band-aids because it's so humid that you run the risk of your skin rotting. i've gone through practically a whole tube of neosporin, but i still have all these gross pus-filled things all over my legs.

i'm not writing this to gross you out (well maybe a little) – i swear i do have a point.

last weekend at the looc marine sanctuary (see previous entry), i had a run in with a crown-of-thorns (COT) starfish. well, i think that's what it was. i was out snorkelling and saw a COT eating some coral when i was in a real shallow area and got a great picture (stupid starfish ruining everything),



[don't be fooled by how pretty they are – these starfish are eating healthy coral and destroying reefs worldwide.]


and then when i was swimming away, managed to kick something that immediately began to throb and hurt like nothing i have ever known (as in, i was cursing out-loud into my snorkel in pain). i immediately returned to the floating house and looked down at my foot and had about eight puncture wounds. the guys out there with us swore it was a sea urchin, but i'm pretty sure i managed to kick that damn COT.

everyone told me not to worry about it – that the pain would subside in a few hours and suggested everything from kalamansi juice (a lime-like citrus) to vinegar to pee and the whole time my foot is throbbing and i can't walk or get on my shoes because it's right inbetween my big toe and ring toe. and it's the foot i have a toe ring on and my foot immediately began to swell up.

i tried to dig the spines out, but was unsuccessful. and i returned to long beach with my grotesquely swollen foot.

by wednesday, i was starting to get a bit nervous – my foot was turning purple and hurt more than i can possibly describe and ... there was so much pus and my poor bottle of neosporin didn't seem to be making any difference. jeremy had been to the health clinic in san agustin and said it was quite nice, so i bit the bullet and decided to visit the doctor. when i arrived, i was told that the doctor was at a seminar and to go to the hospital instead.

so ... i walked down the dirt road to the hospital – a rather dilapidated looking building and feeling, to be honest, quite terrified at the prospect of visiting a hospital in a third world country, on one of the more isolated islands, in one of the more isolated municipalities.





[the "surgery" room]


i limped my way to the entrance and a guy showed me to the nurses station. everyone in the vicinity (about five nurses, a few janitors, a few other patients, the cat) gathered around while i showed them my foot and was immediately met with suggestions to pour kalamansi juice on it. i just said, "please, i just want an anti-biotic. it's turning purple." so they called over the doctor, a very nice young woman who spoke excellent english (thank god, if she hadn't i would have just run). and she said she wanted to "go in and see" so we walked to the surgery area of the hospital and i sat on one of those normal examining bed things which had cat hair all over it and they poured some sort of sterilization thing all over my foot. i was ... pretty terrified, especially when they brought over the tray of tools. have these been sterilized? where have they been sterilized? why is there cat hair on the bed? why is there a man staring at me through the window?

when she mentioned anaesthetizing my foot, i just sort-of nodded in shock, but did see that the needle was sterilized and wrapped in those plastic things, just like in the states, thank god. they just ... seemed to sort of stab around in my foot (ahh so painful!) until it was numb and then dug around trying to remove the spines, but "all she found was pus"

i did get my antibiotic prescription though, along with a painkiller and a list of "medical supplies" to get at the botica. and when i asked about payment, they pointed to a donation jar. it had a few five and ten peso coins. i had ... absolutely no idea how much was appropriate and only had on me a few 500 peso bills and about 100 20 peso bills, but i put in 100. i feel like i should have probably put in more. i mean, i am alive, and she was very good.

so, although a bit scary ... i have survived my first hospital experience in the philippines. first and hopefully last. i figured a run-in with something with spikes was inevitable – hopefully i'll continue to avoid scorpion and stone fish!

27 november note: my foot looks a lot better, although it still has all the spikes in it. i won't gross you out with pictures of it.