souvenir of mexico
(or did i give mexico a piece of myself?)

alright, here it is.

disclaimer: you may not want to read this if you can't stand talk of blood and gore, or don't have an eternity to read this entry that's probably as lengthy as a history of the world.

two saturdays ago, a group of us new teachers drove up to punta mita to spend the day on an island by there. we were going to hire a small boat (i think my students told me that it's called a panga or a lancha) that would take us to the island, where we planned to go snorkeling and just hang out on the beach.

all the pangas were lined up along the edge of the water, and as we got into one, i did something very stupid. i placed my left hand on the side of the panga, and while it was there, the panga parked next to ours bumped up against it and BANG! my ring finger got smashed. daytrip over.

at first, it all felt very surreal. the fact that my finger was seriously hurt didn't immediately sink in, and for a few moments i was telling myself that i was okay and that we were still going to head to the island. but then i started to feel some pain, and i looked over at my finger and saw it cut at the top, with fat sticking out, and blood was splurting out like a sprinkler onto my skirt and onto the panga. i proceeded to announce to everyone, "i think i hurt my finger."

for the most part, i stayed surprisingly calm. i turned my head away from the part of me that was split open, and i think my philosophy was "if i can't see it, then i won't lose it."

from then on, things seemed to go in super-slow motion.

alex, a fellow new canadian teacher, declared that we had to go to a hospital. jen, also a new canadian teacher and alex's girlfriend, let her first aid senses kick in and elevated my arm and put some of the ice from our cooler into a plastic bag and placed it by my finger. she then helped me out of the panga and escorted me back to dave's car (dave, the new art teacher from houston, texas via arizona and kansas, just got his car back from the mechanics a couple of days before). i was afraid i might faint, and at one point things got all spotty and i felt lightheaded.

it felt like years before we'd managed to pile everybody into the car (including one of they guys who was going to take us over to the island on the panga) and get going. we were really lucky that amanda, a friend of ours who is teaching at another school here in PV, speaks spanish fluently, b/c we probably would've been lost w/out her. the guy from punta mita directed us towards a doctor in the small town, but the place was closed (i think they were having their siesta), so he gave us directions to another doctor in another tiny town 15 mins away. while this was happening, we were trying to contact our school director on amanda's cellphone, but there didn't seem to be any reception from where we were calling.

the second doctor's office was open, so i was escorted in there, and while i was there, dave drove the guy from punta mita back. the doctor took one look at me and said i had to get to a hospital. unfortunately, we had to wait for dave to return w/ the car. the doctor gave us two options--we could either head to the hospital in san francisco (san pancho), which is a town about 20-30 mins away from where we were, or we could head back to PV (an hour away). we decided to go back to PV, since we knew more ppl there and they would be more familiar w/ which hospital and doctors i should use.

the doctor wrapped my finger up in bandages and put it in btwn some ice packs. he recommended i take a painkiller and gave me the option of either having it injected into my ass or swallowed in pill form. i chose the pills, even if it meant they would take longer to kick in. i wasn't really interested in having anything poked into my bum cheek.

we still couldn't call our school director b/c the town had no phonelines, but we decided that on our way back to PV, we would stop by his house to see if he was home. it was important to try to let him know about my situation b/c he would know best about what to do. the six of us that were there were all new to the town, so we knew squat about good doctors and hospitals in vallarta.

i think we waited about half an hour before dave returned, and i spent the time asking the doctor to distract me from thinking about my finger by telling me the nicknames for names (the equivalent of the anglo "dick = richard"), which was something that i was fascinated by at the time.
pancho = francisco
poncho = alfonso
chuy = jesus
lalo = eduardo
pepe = jose
lolita = maria delores

dave finally returned and we headed back towards PV. the ice for my finger kept melting, so we stopped by a little convenience store and dave ran in, yelling that a girl's finger had fallen off (slight exaggeration) and we needed ice. one of the workers in the store understood english and quickly gave the ice to dave for free.

despite the awful pain and bleeding, the drive was kinda nice, 'cause i got to pick all the driving music we listened to from my ipod and nobody complained about it.

we stopped in la cruz, which is a sort-of suburb, to see if jerry, our director, was home. thankfully, he was. jen, alex and i moved into his car and he practically flew us to the hospital. he had his wife call their doctors for us, and they met us at the hospital right away.

by this point, it was two hours after the initial incident, and i was paranoid about a few things:
1) i would somehow bleed to death (probably unrealistic and ridiculous)
2) i would get infected by something that was unclean and contaminated and die that way instead
3) they would not be able to reattach the piece of my finger that had come off and it would look deformed and hideous for the rest of my (possibly short) life.

fun stuff, huh?

at the hospital, they moved me into a little room and the nurses began to remove the bandages on my finger and sprayed it w/ antiseptic stuff to disinfect it. i've never screamed so many profanities so loudly in my life. jen (who took life sci at queen's and was also a con-eddie a few years ahead of me) stayed w/ me in the room and was nice enough to let me squeeze the heck out of her hands. she watched the whole thing, which even i couldn't do, and she told me about some of it later on.

my school director's doctor and a plastic surgeon (parents of kids at the school) looked at my finger and then they told me what they were going to do. that was probably the scariest moment of my life; at that point they could have completely shattered me--all the terrible things they possibly could have said filled my head and i almost didn't want to hear what they were actually going to tell me.

what they ended up saying was that the tip of my finger had come off, but it didn't go straight across--it went diagonally, the front tip of my finger and my whole nail was gone. however, the root of the nail was still there, so it would grow back eventually. the very tip of the top of my bone was gone (they did an x-ray) as well. they told me that they were going to pull the skin from my finger up to the top where the edge of my nail was supposed to be, and stitch it together. the length of my finger wouldn't change very much, and they said that my finger would look relatively normal after three months, with the nail grown back.

they injected anaesthetic into my hand to freeze it, and the doctor said i would only feel it for two minutes. "TWO MINUTES?!?!!" i freaked out. he actually meant two seconds, but he got mixed up, explaining that his english wasn't very good. (i don't recall minutes sounding like seconds in spanish, though!)
they rubbed iodine all over my hand, and i yelped in pain again, so they injected more anaesthesia. then it was okay.

jen later told me that the piece of my finger had been hanging by a thread of my skin the whole time, and that it had looked pretty disgusting. she also told me that the doctors had removed the piece completely when they were operating on me and thrown it straight into the garbage. i waved goodbye to it afterwards (i didn't actually see it though). she had been hoping that they would reattach it, but i guess it wasn't possible.

funnily enough, alex felt closer to me after this experience, since he lost the whole top of his right index finger six years ago by slamming it in a car door. i now have somebody to go to if i have questions. we're also thinking of starting a "nub club." while they were operating on me, he came into the room and told me that his biggest regret when this happened to him was that he never took a picture of the finger at the time. he was trying to convince me to take one so that whenever somebody asks me what happened, i can just whip the picture out of my backpocket and show it to them. thanks, but no thanks. i haven't even looked at my finger w/out bandages on since i turned away from it on the panga.

nothing like this had ever happened to me before. i guess i'd lived a pretty sheltered life prior to this...i've never broken or sprained anything in my life, and i'd certainly never had stitches before. this was the first time i'd have to have my arm in a sling or shower w/ a plastic bag wrapped over my hand. guess i was due.

they put me on five different kinds of medication, two of which were painkillers that made me crazy-nauseous for the next two days, leaving me bedridden. (kim took very good care of me though, making up for the fact that she couldn't do anything during the actual incident since she can't stand the sight of blood.) i missed two days of school, and when i went back, my kids all wanted to hear my story and then proceeded to flood me w/ gruesome stories of their own.

oh, and i couldn't even manage to stay away from getting a shot in the bum. after the mini-operation, they gave me a tetanus shot in the left cheek. hmph.

this is really freaking long. and i'm not even entirely finished yet. i'll save the follow-up for the next post, and then i have to catch y'all up on the rest of the last two weeks of my life.

let's just say for now that i'm okay, and i'm glad i've met such good ppl here who have treated me so well and helped me so much throughout this whole pathetic ordeal. i'm sorry i've kept so many of you back at home in the dark for so long, but really, my parents only found out a few days ago.

maybe i'll get a picture of my finger up soon!