The sun finally rose.
I did a happy dance in my large bed by the long cold fire in the long cold room.
Everything hurts. I gasped as the bum-wiggling happy dance revealed new aches and pains in my ribcage. I'd probably feel the exact same way if I'd been HIT by that car. I took a moment to indulge in melodramatic, totally unrealistic thoughts.
My kid bandaids had soaked through several times during the night, so Orange Cat and I had just placed a mountain of toilet paper over the blood and stuck it on with tape.
Hey there, Mexico. I glared at the red bleeding through the white. And this is the most expensive, touristic hostel in town. Kid bandaids and toilet paper. I wonder what we would have found as far as medical help goes if we'd still been at the first hostel. Edwin probably would have just given me a mushroom, his beanie and a seat by the fire. Which isn't bad, but...
I stumbled to the toilet, brushed my teeth and looked longingly at the shower.
I hear you have hot water. And now I can't use you because I have a mountain of toilet paper on my leg. Ach. Stupid. You could have been my 6th hot shower in Mexico.
Orange Cat was sitting up in bed when I returned from my... err... excursion to the toilet.
"How do you feel, Cat?"
"I mean, I've felt better," I sighed and collapsed onto the bed by the fire. "I need new bandages. Proper ones."
"Yes. And I think you need stitches."
"I really, REALLY don't want stitches... damn," I performed a full-on face-palm. "Hey, I need to talk with Boy. I told him I'd be online at 8:00."
"Can you walk up the hill?"
"Yeah... I think."
"Or can you wait to talk with him until later?"
"No... I mean... I think he'd be upset to not know about my knee and he'd also be upset to know that I hurt myself walking up a hill to talk with him. So this is one situation where I don't see a lot of winning."
"I'll walk up with you."
"Thanks, Cat."
"Of course, Cat."
So I leaned heavily on Andrej and we slowly, slowly trudged up the hill.
"You know, I spent a year of my childhood with a nasty case of Osgood-Schlatter disease in my right knee. And could hardly walk. God, that was a sucky year. Sometimes it was so painful that I had to sit on my bum and push myself up stairs backwards. But it taught me how to walk without using my right knee. Which is helping me loads right now," I said as I dragged my right leg in front of me and angled it out to the side.
We made it to reception in one piece and Orange Cat brought me a cup of something that playing make-believe it was coffee. But that my experienced eye didn't buy one bit.
"You snored last night, Cat."
"No I didn't. I don't snore. And I didn't sleep."
"Well... it wasn't a lot of snoring. It was more like... humming."
"I don't know... I don't think I managed to sleep long enough to hum."
When Boy came online, I started our conversation with the abysmal foreshadowing of,
"so... there's something I need to tell you. First off, I'm okay. But..."
Orange Cat joined me later and we waited over an hour and a half for a colectivo to take us into San Miguel. Where there was a clinic at which I could find some manner of doctor with (hopefully) proper bandages.
 |
| My right leg has never had such fantastic external rotation. Under normal circumstances, I'd be thrilled. But now... eh. |
Um.
I mean.
I wouldn't complain if I never had to do that again.
We arrived at the clinic in San Miguel what seemed like hours (but was probably only 20 minutes) later. Mom's sat with their babies on the steps outside the clinic door. I briefly wondered why they weren't waiting inside.
It's not exactly COLD out here...
And then we walked into the waiting room.
And it's not exactly WARM in here. Jesus. So cold.
A young woman approached and said something in Spanish. 'Cos it had worked so well the night before, I simply pulled up my pants leg in response.
"Snake bite?" the woman asked.
"No," and I just removed the mountain of toilet paper to show her the chorizo.
"Okay," she stood. "todo bien."
And left.
Wait, what? What happens now?
We waited inside until we got too cold.
Then we waited outside until we got too hot.
At some point along the line, we noticed that all the posters in the waiting room had pictures of a) pregnant woman or b) diarrhea.
"People come in here to figure out which one they have," Orange Cat joked. "50-50. If they're not pregnant, they have diarrhea."
We waited inside until we got too cold.
Then we waited outside until we got too hot.
"Orange Cat... I'm really hungry," I said, remembering that the only thing I'd... err... "eaten" that morning had been two cups of wannabe coffee. "Do you think you could get me some yogurt?"
"And cheese?"
"Always cheese. Always."
We finally made it into the doctor's office.
She sat me down by her desk.
Orange Cat sat himself down beside me and put his arm around me.
The doctor pulled on her gloves.
And broke them.
The doctor took out her needle and thread.
And dropped it.
The doctor prepared a syringe full of whatever numbing fluid she was going to stab my knee with.
Stabbed my knee.
And then waited approximately 3.2 seconds for the numbing fluid to you know, NUMB my leg before she took out a fresh needle and thread and started sewing my knee together.
So I felt approximately everything.
All two, shoddy stitches.
Well... at least she didn't do it the other way around. Give me stitches and THEN give me a shot. Probably would have been equally as effective, though.
She put some gauze over my leg with a wee bit of tape.
"Quanto?" we asked.
She looked vaguely surprised.
"Nothing."
"Gracias," we said as Orange Cat supported me out of the room.
"I'm glad it's cleaned and that it looks less like chorizo," I told my Slovenian as we waited on the side of the road for the colectivo to take us back to San Jose. "But I definitely needed more than two stitches. And the bandage is already falling off."
"I've never seen such a clumsy doctor. And I think I could have done a better job with those stitches."
"At least it's clean," I repeated myself.
I stumbled over to find a flower to put in Orange Cat's Mexican hat.
"Yes."
A lesson I learned from Michael that I'll probably carry with me forever.
Flowers go in hats. Period. Also behind ears and sometimes in shirts.
We ate a lunch of tlayudas and mint tea.
Orange Cat bought me some peanut butter for my stress and some milk for hot chocolate. For my happiness. And a bottle of red wine. To go with the view.
We found ourselves in the cabaña with Ella and Brendon that afternoon around five thirty.
Soft mist was slowly making its way towards us.
(the cleaning lady had run off with my fabulously yellow spoonforkknife thing (which devastated me), so Brendon had gone up to reception to beg another. Which he was given in confusion. This is one of the positive aspects of having a language barrier. If people aren't sure what you're asking, they don't quite know how to say no to what they're not quite sure you're asking)
We passed around the spoon (which was so NOT fabulously yellow and lacked a significant amount of knife-forkage).
"The more you chew it, the better," Brendon handed the unfabulous spoon to me for the fourth time.
Savoring peanut butter is, um, NOT a problem for this girl.
"It'll take about half an hour for the effects to kick in," our South African leader handed me the spoon to stir my hot chocolate. Orange Cat sat with me inside.
Ella and Brendon went to go buy cigarettes.
I finished the hot chocolate,
found a pillow
and melted into the cold floor --
hot fire burning my face and
cold floor freezing my right side.
My eyes suddenly wouldn't close.
I needed to absorb everything.
Feel it all.
See it all.
Time
just
stopped.
I watched the sap melt in slow motion from the burning logs
drip
splash
sizzle
spark
My eyes watered into the pillow from the heat and the Ethan Hawk style NOT blinking (my university instructor for "acting for the camera" would have been so proud).
I started to feel nauseous, but the cold floor and the horizontal position helped keep my peanut butter in my stomach and out of the toilet.
Ella, however, was not in a horizontal position on the cold floor.
Her peanut butter ended up in the toilet.
Violently.
All of it.
"Nausea is a normal response," our wise leader tried to calm us down.
But I was worried.
So I giggled.
The sap sparked extra loudly.
So I giggled.
A spasm of pain shot through my knee.
So I giggled.
Girl, what's with all the giggling?
I giggled some more.
"Aimee has the best laugh," Brendon commented from on top of the bed (I had wriggled almost all the way under it, by this point). "Earthy and organic and --"
I interrupted him with a giggle.
Ella, Brendon and Orange Cat went to sit outside in the mist and watch the sun go down.
I couldn't/wouldn't leave the fire. I was trapped on the floor, staring at the orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (yes, purple) flames as the changed shapes and colors and... and...
But all alone in the room, I began to experience a bit of paranoia.
Girl, you just took mushrooms sold to you from a family you don't know in the middle of Mexico on a mountain when you have a bum leg.
I think you may have made more intelligent decisions in your life.
Okay, I calmed myself as I felt my chest rise and fall in hyperventilation. Paranoia is one this mushroom's effects, right? So... what can you do to keep from being overwhelmed? Err... just realize that this isn't the reality. What I'm feeling right now isn't the reality.
The rising and falling of my chest began to slow, but even so, I felt markedly better when Brendon, Ella and Cat returned to sit with me by the fire.
"Want to play a game?" Brendon asked. "Guess what time it is."
"8:00," said Orange Cat.
"8:17," said Brendon.
"8:30," said Blue Cat.
"10:00," said Ella.
"TEN O'CLOCK," giggled Orange Cat. "But we just watched the sun go down!"
Brendon showed us his phone.
"It's seven."
Moments from the rest of the trip that stand out:
Brendon reading Andrej's Slovenian book like a preacher in front of the fire. Orange Cat collapsing in a fit of laughter.
Getting one of the employees to bring us more wood for the fire. With all of us laughing on the floor and taking wood out of the basket as the poor employee tried to fill it.
Andrej hallucinating that Ella's hair was on fire. And thus promoting her from "white cat" to "lion-ESS".
Orange Cat trying to figure out how to get into bed and being completely unable to do so. He had forgotten how to crawl under blankets.
My excruciating pain. Shrooms (unfortunately) had the same effect on my body as the edibles in Holland. Every part of my physical and emotional bodies that held pain or tension was exacerbated. Greatly.
Maybe this is one reason mushrooms were used in healing ceremonies. To cleanse. There is no way I can not feel this pain right now. There's no way I can ignore this. No way.
As I gazed into the fire, I felt the flickering flames licking at my knee, moving into my heart, through my ribs, causing me to gasp involuntarily.
And to giggle.
I love this. No matter how much pain I'm feeling, I giggle. In yoga, we're supposed to breathe through the tension. Breathe through the stress. I love that mushrooms show me my pain and then kind of force me to laugh through it.
I laughed and laughed until we all crawled into bed.
Where Andrej stayed awake until three in the morning and had visions of giant rats.
And I tried to calm my beating heart and let the pain flow out.
Brendon was so hot that he slept nearly naked with no blankets.
Andrej was so cold that he slept in his clothes with the blankets pulled up around his chin.
Ella's mushrooms were in the toilet with her peanut butter. So. She slept normally.
I made hot chocolate to share with Orange Cat on the dying embers when I awoke.
God. I feel so... refreshed. Really, really wonderful. Clean. Even with the hole in my leg.
 |
| Mexican mountain stitches. :( They look like the doctor just put a spider on top of the chorizo. |
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