IT'S ALWAYS FUN UNTIL SOMEONE GETS HURT
(part four of the Hawaii Chronicles)

If you haven't already, read the beginning of the story here. When we left off, our fearless blogger was catching big waves and showing people how surfing is really done. Every ride since my first had been the perfect ride. All the instructors were complimenting me on my natural surf abilities. Though paddling back out each time was tiring, I was having the time of my life and working my biceps too. Who needs a gym membership when you have an ocean? Little did I know, the next wave I caught would be my last.

Once again, Fats guided me into position. One of the Canadian brothers was floating nearby. Then I heard the signal, Paddle! Canada and I start paddling then, Up!. We both popped up on our boards but then something went wrong, terribly wrong. Fats had given us the signals either too soon or too late. We both went crashing down into the water. My breath was taken away as the waves continued to crash down over us. As I made my way to the surface, I felt a tug on my ankle. It was the tether that kept me from getting separated from my board. The board was floating away and attempting to take me with it. I finally was able to control the board and climbed onto it. My foot was aching a little but I didn't think much of it. I stretched out on the board and decided to chill and collect my breath. I planned to wait a few minutes before paddling back to catch another wave. I looked back to make sure I wasn't in anyone's way and that's when I saw IT. A river of blood pouring off the board and into the ocean. WTF?! I started having flashbacks of all those National Geographic Channel shows I've watched. Did you know sharks can smell one drop of blood in a three square mile area? That's just how good their noses are. I'll be damned if I let a shark get me. Shark-bitten legs are just not sexy. I signaled to jezchill and made my way back to the shore. With sadness, I made my way onto the sand and gave up the surfboard. I saw that my foot was cut but still didn't think it was a big deal. I hobbled over to the lifeguard and he and jezchill rinsed out the wound and bandaged it for me.

Fast forward a few hours and my dad has convinced me I should go see a doctor. Fast forward a little more and I'm at an urgent care clinic. This is when the fun began (note the sarcasm in my voicewords). The nurse took the bandage off my foot. I looked at the cut closely for the first time. Look at the bottom of your foot. See that line where your big toe bends? You do? Good. Mine is gone. As in I sliced my toe open on that line literally from one side all the way to the other. The cut (really a gash) was very wide and very deep. So wide that when I asked if I would need stitches, I was told there was nothing to stitch. The wound was too wide to pull together. The only thing she could do was bandage it and it would take approximately a MONTH to heal completely. A month?! I was supposed to go skiing in TWO WEEKS. But before she could bandage it, she said she needed to clean out the wound because there was still some sand in it. She pulled out a pair of loooong tweezers. I appealed to her sense of compassion and asked her to try washing it out before she used the tweezers. She said it wouldn't work but I guess she could see the desperation in my eyes. She just an entire liter of saline solution (which was not a pleasant experience, nothing like salt water in an open wound) but all the sand wouldn't come out. She said she had to choice but to use the tweezers. I asked for some type of local anesthetic. She said they couldn't give me any. I pleaded but it was to no avail. Much to my chagrin, she proceeded to dig around in the wound to get out every last grain of sand. I always thought I had a high tolerance for pain but this was really testing me. I'm surprised I didn't crush any bones in jezchill's hand as hard as I was squeezing it and I think I actually kicked the nurse at one point in time. Oh well, she deserved it for not giving me any drugs. She finally finished and bandaged me up and instructed me to try to stay off my foot and off we went. I refused to look at, much less touch, my disgusting wound so jezchill was forced to slather on Neosporin and change my bloody and oozy bandage twice a day. Now that's love. I told him at least he got off better than Bobby did having to dig doody out of Whitney's booty. LOL.

I'm traveling next week so the posts may not be as frequent but stay tuned for how we salvaged the rest of our week in paradise.