This is why I don't promise consistent blogs...
Believe me, it wasn't for a lack of trying. My promising interntet source at the local hospital was out at least half of the times that I tried to use it, and a few times I forgot to bring my plug adaptor. Add in a little laziness and forgetfulness, and there you have my poorly managed blog!
So I have a story that doesn't in the littlest bit relate to Peace Corps, but I think it's a pretty fantastic story so I'm gonna share it with you now. A while back, I was doing my dishes, scrubbing a pot of old pasta with some noodles real stuck to the bottom of the pot. After my sponge and steel wool both failed me, I decided to attack it with my finger nail. With my first attempt, I feel a seering pain in my finger nail, and was confident that I had ripped it off. When I looked at my finger though, my nail was still there, but with a little addition. Going about 3/4 of the way down my nail was a white blob. I pushed on the blob a little bit, and to my suprise, a small bit of noodle squeezed out from under my nail! Disgusted and fascinated, I kept doing this for maybe 2 hours (neglecting the rest of my dishes all the while...) and a little more pasta kept squeezing out each time, but the vast majority of the nood was still in there and my finger was absolutely throbbing.
I'm not entirely sure why, but for some reason I expected my body would just handle the situation on its own, the way it would a splinter and that this wouldn't require medical attention. After a couple of days though, this proved to not be the case, so I went to the doctor to get it looked at. The doctor quickly decided that noodle fingers were not his area of expertise, so he made the FANTASTIC decision to ship me off to Bloemfontain where I could get surgery, but more importantly, eat McDonalds!
So 2 days later (this is day 5 of noodle finger, if you were counting), Peace Corps drove me from Maseru to Bloem for my surgery. The doctor was a friendly enough guy and made me feel right proud when he told me that this was his "weirdest case all week." He started by putting some topical anesthetic around the base of noodle finger that didn't actually numb anything, just got all over my shirt. Then they took me to a surgery room, where they laid me on a table, put a sheet over me (still have no idea why), and monitored my vitals for about 20 minutes. I found this whole scene very weird, since I was surrounded by posters describing the process of a colonoscopy and the anatomy of the colon, which had me fretting that they got their patients mixed up and I was in for more than I bargained for.
Eventually the doctor came back in, and with about a 5" needle, began injecting antisthetic at the base of my finger. The needle had this cartridge kind of thing that he could pop in new tubes of antisthetic when the previous ran out. These tubes were not little, and he used 5, which swelled my finger to at least double its original size. It looked pretty awesome and gave me some entertainment while I waited for it to numb up.
After it numbed, he came back in, placed my hand in this little holder to get started. Then he took and obscenely large probe, and while carrying on a creepily casual conversation with me, started scooping the gunk. I was watching the whole time, and while it didn't hurt, it was still kind of intense to see. With his first scoop, he pulled out a big glob of white stuff. Trying to sound unphased, I said, "Guess there's the noodle! Hungry?" He then told me that that wasn't actually my noodle. My noodle had apparently been absorbed through my finger, which in turn got infected and then started producing pus. This grossed me out enough to quash any further witty remarks I might have had. He scooped away for maybe another 10 minutes, then got another ridiculously large needle and injected antibiotics under my nail. Again, I still couldn't actually feel any of this, but the whole time I kept thinking of how bad this would hurt when the antisthetic wore off, but maybe he would hook me up with some awesome pain killers.
He then finished up and gave me a big bag of ice and gave me my scrip, which I was disappointed to see was just for a large dose of advil. Which I forgot to fill. And forgot to take my ice. I left a bit dejected and grossed out, but all was right again when we stopped for McDonalds, and loaded myself up with burgers and fountain drinks, making it an OK day.
I hope I didn't bore you with too many details, but this is one of my favorite Peace Corps stories, although it has nothing to do with my Peace Corps life. On a side note, life here is good, job is going well enough, and I'm a generally happy fellow these days. Hope this finds you well, and teaches you an important lesson in dish scrubbing safety!
Khotso,
Grant
