Blood blisters. That's the next step in the "it will get worse before it gets better" healing process. My skin on my hands is very tender. Bumping my fingers against something, or accidentally scraping them results in a blood blister. Anywhere else on my body and this isn't an issue, but think about how much hands are almost always being used. I have no choice. No pictures this time, I think you get the point.
This year marked my first ever Thanksgiving outside of New England. The Caribbean isn't a bad replacement. After work on Thursday, the executive director of the organization hosted about thirty people at her house and cooked a genuine Thanksgiving dinner. We all had to write on a card what we were thankful for. Some said family, friends, and Obama as president. Mine said my hands. The food was great. Turkey's good. I really like turkey. I wouldn't have minded providing a certain chicken for dinner to change things up though. Let me explain.
A few posts ago I mentioned (and had video of) the constant noise going on in my neighborhood. The noise pollution is incredibly between people yelling, music, and motorcycles. I've learned to sleep through anything, even the way-too-loud avocado man who's out yelling stuff from his stand just next to my apartment by six in the morning.
Last weekend, just before bed, I noticed a peculiar sound coming from my back window. It sounded like a dying animal of some kind. The noise it made was most like a rooster I guess, but it definitely wasn't the stereotypical and very familiar "cock-a-doodle-doo" that I always hear here. Plus, it was like midnight. That's not the normal time for a rooster to be making noise.
Cue mid-week. The noise was back and obnoxiously loud. I woke up, which I don't do, not from noise, and looked at my clock. 4:30am. What? The sun's not up until almost 7 here. This noise sounded like it was coming from INSIDE my room (I checked, it wasn't).
I started talking about this weird, still unconfirmed animal sound at work. My next door neighbor Adriana confirmed hearing the noise too, and that it was definitely a rooster. Apparently roosters sleep in trees too. I didn't know that. So that puts this rooster's sound trajectory much more in line with our third floor windows (as opposed to being on the ground). This rooster is living in a tree directly behind my apartment building. Thursday morning I was woken up again, so did my neighbor.
We needed a plan. After brainstorming ideas ranging from firing pebbles at the chicken in the hopes that it would up and leave to getting a garbage bag, grabbing the rooster, and giving it to one of our friends with a motorbike so that it can be relocated. My idea was to eat it for "Dominican Thanksgiving."
Okay, let's be honest. I have no idea how to properly kill (although I could use that awkward method used for turkeys in that Sarah Palin interview), de-feather, gut, cook, and serve a real life chicken. Thursday came and went. But Friday morning when I was woken up at the earliest time yet, I grabbed my camera and hit record. So, below is a link to YouTube with the video. Nothing astounding, just to get a sense of how loud this animal was. The best part is that a motorbike drive by at the same time, and it sounds very faint compared to the rooster (and trust me, the noise of those engines are not faint). I like how the rooster noises just get louder and louder as it goes. And no, there's no solution to this problem yet.
Listen here: Rooster
I went swimming for the first time today since October. So yeah, it's nice to be able to do normal things again.
_______________________
As an aside for anyone who hasn't caught up with me outside of this blog. My work here in the Dominican Republic is done in two weeks. I will be traveling around the country for a week before heading home for good a week or so before Christmas, and I will be living and working in the United States come January. I still have a bunch of stories that I haven't told and haven't had time to tell. Hopefully I can put them together over the next few weeks.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Healing Process
If you don't want any details, and there aren't too many...skip this post.
When I woke up the air mattress was completely deflated. The gauze around my finger was completely yellow and completely soaked. Tissue fluid. I know all about it from the half dozen or so serious raspberries I've gotten on my legs from playing softball at Seton Hall and the Cape.
Over the course of the next few days, as I changed gauze, it repeatedly would become soaked with tissue fluid escaping the broken blister on my index finger. Meanwhile, my other fingers began to start their healing process. My left index finger blistered a little, my left thumb blistered a lot while fingers on my right hand just remained bright red, which is good, less severe.
The good news is I ended up getting three days off from work. Three extremely boring days of learning to do everything with my ring and pinky fingers on each hand.
By Saturday, still leaking tissue fluid, my dad ordered me to perform minor surgery on my hand. I needed to cut off any dead tissue that could be cut off. I can now say that I've been eaten by ants. As I removed each piece of skin I put it on my counter as I continued, trying to get it all out of the way. By the time I looked down dozens of small ants covered the dead skin on the counter. That was gross. What was underneath the dead skin was much more gross.
Bacitracin and wrap. That was the process.
Traumatized, I went to the beach for the first time in a while just to sit. The next thing I knew I was participating in happy hour at one of the bars. After going home to eat dinner, I decided it was best if I just went out and tried to act normal again. Cold drinks would certainly feel good on my hand.
One of the hole in the wall places here in Cabarete is called Blue Bar, well because it's blue. It's not on the beach, but it about a minute walk off the beach and across the street. Very few people know of it/how cheap its drinks are. Now Blue Bar also happens to have a "challenge." Drink 8 of their cuba libres (rum and cokes) in one night and you get your name on the wall. Now these are not your average American drinks. Think a good sized styrofoam cup, then 4/5 rum, the rest coke. Now that's a challenge. I decided to try it.
Last Monday was a national holiday. No school. Sweet. So the organization took us to a German owned Thai restaurant with a pool and a dog named Ganja (yeah, no one could keep a straight face when the Arnold Schwarzenneger sounding guy told us). So I got to be the boring non-swimmer while everyone else had a blast. Great timing. At least the food was amazing (see that mom? I'll even eat Thai food now).
The rest of the week went like this:
Tuesday - everyone had questions about my hands
Wednesday - I stopped leaking tissue fluid
Thursday - the blister on my thumb broke...during class...while I was writing on the board
Friday - The rest of my bad bad right index finger looks like the finger of a dead person. Pale, pale, pale, and becoming very loose. As it starts to come off in the shower, I peel the rest off. I now have a bright red finger that looks worse than anything before it, but is actually much better off. It will, like my other fingers, start to lighten in color and become my skin.
For now it's still incredibly disgusting and raw.
***Obligatory picture warning***
The progression of one of my burns...with a few other pictures thrown in.
This is the beginning of my new finger.
And yeah, I completed it.
When I woke up the air mattress was completely deflated. The gauze around my finger was completely yellow and completely soaked. Tissue fluid. I know all about it from the half dozen or so serious raspberries I've gotten on my legs from playing softball at Seton Hall and the Cape.
Over the course of the next few days, as I changed gauze, it repeatedly would become soaked with tissue fluid escaping the broken blister on my index finger. Meanwhile, my other fingers began to start their healing process. My left index finger blistered a little, my left thumb blistered a lot while fingers on my right hand just remained bright red, which is good, less severe.
The good news is I ended up getting three days off from work. Three extremely boring days of learning to do everything with my ring and pinky fingers on each hand.
By Saturday, still leaking tissue fluid, my dad ordered me to perform minor surgery on my hand. I needed to cut off any dead tissue that could be cut off. I can now say that I've been eaten by ants. As I removed each piece of skin I put it on my counter as I continued, trying to get it all out of the way. By the time I looked down dozens of small ants covered the dead skin on the counter. That was gross. What was underneath the dead skin was much more gross.
Bacitracin and wrap. That was the process.
Traumatized, I went to the beach for the first time in a while just to sit. The next thing I knew I was participating in happy hour at one of the bars. After going home to eat dinner, I decided it was best if I just went out and tried to act normal again. Cold drinks would certainly feel good on my hand.
One of the hole in the wall places here in Cabarete is called Blue Bar, well because it's blue. It's not on the beach, but it about a minute walk off the beach and across the street. Very few people know of it/how cheap its drinks are. Now Blue Bar also happens to have a "challenge." Drink 8 of their cuba libres (rum and cokes) in one night and you get your name on the wall. Now these are not your average American drinks. Think a good sized styrofoam cup, then 4/5 rum, the rest coke. Now that's a challenge. I decided to try it.
Last Monday was a national holiday. No school. Sweet. So the organization took us to a German owned Thai restaurant with a pool and a dog named Ganja (yeah, no one could keep a straight face when the Arnold Schwarzenneger sounding guy told us). So I got to be the boring non-swimmer while everyone else had a blast. Great timing. At least the food was amazing (see that mom? I'll even eat Thai food now).
The rest of the week went like this:
Tuesday - everyone had questions about my hands
Wednesday - I stopped leaking tissue fluid
Thursday - the blister on my thumb broke...during class...while I was writing on the board
Friday - The rest of my bad bad right index finger looks like the finger of a dead person. Pale, pale, pale, and becoming very loose. As it starts to come off in the shower, I peel the rest off. I now have a bright red finger that looks worse than anything before it, but is actually much better off. It will, like my other fingers, start to lighten in color and become my skin.
For now it's still incredibly disgusting and raw.
***Obligatory picture warning***
The progression of one of my burns...with a few other pictures thrown in.
This is the beginning of my new finger.
And yeah, I completed it.
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