thefinalride-blog - Tumblr blog

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

Stitches Es No Bueno

22/11/13

I am writing from a posh hotel room in Quito, Ecuador. Crutches has just left. A piece of me has just left. I should be trying to sleep to make time go faster.

Yesterday 21/11/13 Finally it's the day I'm getting my stitches out. After 10 long days of waiting, 10 days of being fed like pigs, 10 days of lying in bed, 10 days of feeling dependant on the family, 10 days of talking about the last month of our trip in Colombia. Finally that day has arrived. We'll cross the border today to have time to enjoy the posh hotel I booked in Cali for tomorrow night before taking our flight to Cartagena. 'Vamos, vamos' I say. Everyone gets into the car and papi drives to the hospital. 'Come back at 12.' Bloody hell! Crutches has bought thank you presents for the family.

11:30am. We head back to hospital. The nurse is talking to my like I'm a retard. Siiiii yo entiendooooo, graciassss. Then onto the waiting room for an hour. Crutches falls asleep on my shoulder. It's my turn. I crutch it to the room 'traumatologia' where the traumatologue is waiting for me. I lie on the bed and take my bandage off. I'm confident, let's get them out so we can finally get drunk on a beach.

The first look of the doctor doesn't reinsure me. The skin is dead he said. What? Why? He doesn't look happy, but starts taking the stitches out which makes me think it's ok, I will be fine, no problemo. After taking out the 4th stitch he stops. His face says 'what a disaster'. I panick. He finally says the words 'the skin is dead with the traumatism. The skin hasn't healed, a bit of it is infected, we need to operate again before it reaches the bone.' My body starts shaking. I look at my foot, the stitches were completely useless, the hole Is there just like it was 2 weeks before. The doctor presses my foot to make the excess blood come out of my foot. 'Who operated you?' He says. He looks so concerned at the sight in front of him.

Crutches is shocked. We both don't understand. Adeline and Alex, the 2 'doctors' came to the house 3 times last week and examined my foot. Every time they were amazed how good my foot was, how perfect the healing process was going. 40 hours later and my foot is infected, the operation was useless. How did they not notice that?! Me and Crutches can't believe how unprofessional they were.

The doctor suggests I stay in hospital for 7 days and he can re operate. There's no way I'm staying here any longer, my decision is already made. I'm going home. I'm so angry at myself. Why didn't I listen to my mum? She's always right. I'm so stupid, I am 'une vrai tete brûlée et tete de Pioche' like she said.

(Crutches)

He says he understands her decision and explains the infection is around the hole in her foot and she has to treat it until it spreads to her bone, causing more foot to be removed. It's serious. I hated myself. I could have convinced her to go home. When it happened Frenchy would have listened to anyone, especially me. I said i didn't want to get involved in her decision. I thought we could handle it and if she stayed i didn't want to be the one her parents hated. If i said you should go home she probably would have, but I didn't. We were both stupid fucking adventurous fucks.

The doctor says she needs this and that medication and an injection every day until she makes it back to France, including one today. That means i will have to inject her. I ask him to explain what i do. He draws a semi circle with a cross inside then puts a dot in the bottom right hand corner of the cross. 'Here you inject'. 'I don't understand' I reply. He draws another semi circle and I realise the semi circle is half of her arse and he is dotting where i will have to inject her antibiotics. He says '45 degrees, todo injection, the whole injection'. I am in way too deep, I don't know what I am doing, I could do it wrong, but there is no one else. I am scared now and I am worrying for Frenchys foot and health. I need to be there to inject her today and tomorrow otherwise she will have to inject herself on the plane and she hates needles. I know she won't do it and the foot will become more infected.

Papi and I drive to get the medication the doctor has prescribed. We drive round all the pharmacies in town, but none have the specific antibiotics she needs. The fourth one does, but instead of the required 500mg, he only has 1 gram. I say ok and take it. I don't feel like it's a common drug. I've already bought the required 3 injections at the previous pharmacy, but now that I have 1 gram instead of the prescribed half I have to buy 3 larger injections. The antibiotics are powder in a small glass bottle. He also makes me buy 3 small glass tubes with liquid inside. I ask him to explain what to do in spanish. He acts out breaking the glass bottle and mixing it with the powder. I don't understand. I pay and leave. I'm shaking and I feel the same dizziness as the day in the hospital on the accident kicking in.

We take Frenchy to a pharmacy, Maria's friend is going to show us how to inject Frenchy. Maria explains the situation and before i know it the transfer of the glass bottle liquid into the powder bottle has already happened and French is being summoned to the back of the pharmacy to be injected. I don't know what their giving her, whether this woman is qualified, whether French is allergic to this powder, whether 1 gram is too much. They are conversing about how much 1 gram of this stuff is, I can tell everyone is concerned. I am in way out of my depth, but what can i do? This is antibiotics for her infected foot and she needs to be protected from it spreading. French lays on her belly and I pull down her pants. The woman puts the needle in the right bum cheek, top right hand corner. She's stretching her thumb and index finger from Frenchys bum crack, showing me how to know where to inject her next time. Go to the top of the crack line, stretch your thumb from your index finger and wherever your index finger is is where you should inject her. The previous doctor told me to inject her in the left cheek, bottom right hand corner. Fuck the medical system here, they don't have a clue.

The woman injects and French moans when the needle goes in then screams when the liquid is injected. I hold her thigh down so she doesn't flinch. She's crying. I just want this all to be over. I ask if she is Ok. No response. I panic, think she has had a reaction and died. My heart is pounding. I shake her. She slowly turns around. She's Ok, but she's crying and in pain. 'It still hurts'. I tell her to get up, that I want to get her to the airport as soon as possible. 'Your Ok, but time is against us now, alright'. I know the infection will spread soon and the longer we leave it, the more chance it will spread to her bone and require more of the for to be cut.

0 notes

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

Typhoon Tulcan

19/11/2013.

Typhoon Tulcan.

My alarm goes off, but I turn it off and bury my head between the duvet and Frenchys back. It must be 7am. I still have an hour until the guy interested in Crunchy, the motorbike, arrives in Tulcan. Frenchy nudges me, 'Its 7.30am'. I roll out of bed, eyes half open and proceed my morning ritual of cleaning Frenchys foot. Then I brush my teeth, put on some jeans, grab the motorbike keys and go outside into the morning cold. I turn the keys and of course nothing happens, the battery is dead and he is due in half an hour. Bloody brilliant. I try jump starting him and he's not giving in. I flick the various switches in his interior and try jump starting again, but nothing. I try pushing him around the garden and after picking up speed jump start him. Nothing, the garden is too small. So I take him to the street, holding Crunchy with one hand, pulling the big black front gate with the other and kicking back Bruno and Ducky, the most irritating, space invading dogs. When i shoo them back in i begin to push Crunchy up street, make a U turn and then, whilst on him, push him downhill in first gear. When I have enough speed I release the clutch, press the electric starter button and rev. He coughs and kicks into gear, jumping forward. I quickly change to second gear and he begins to drive normally with an unusual voice. This is going to be a difficult sell today.

I drive him around, he cuts out a few times and I repeat the downhill routine. When he's warmed up I put him into neutral and sit on him for 20 minutes, watching 2 male dogs trying to rape a poor little female dog. She is not amused. She runs away from the white one and finds safety in the black one, but he just ends up as rapey as the white one so when she realises its rape either way she goes back to the white one. I keep whistling at them because every time i do they look around and give her a break for a minute. After the twenty minutes i go to set off in first again, but when it comes to another U turn he cuts out at the top of the street. Just as I am preparing him for another jump start I hear a loud squeal. The black dog is chasing the white dog. They zoom past me and when the black one catches up with the white one he takes a huge bite into the side of his body. He must really want that female. I am sweating and the bike is going to clearly keep cutting out so i push it back to the house, pull the gate and fight against the dogs. They both run past me and once I park the bike me and Luis Jr start chasing them back in.

I go inside to get the other key and collect all the papers he'll need if he buys this piece of crap. When I come back out his taxi is outside. I am nervous. How can I sell the bike when it won't even turn on. I'm so embarrassed. I shake his hand, give him a kiss on the cheek and introduce myself. Mami is out front and says hello. The others are piling Jessica into Luis Jr's kitted out small red car. Jessica has been bed ridden for 4 days now and looks terrible, with rashes on her hands and swollen lips and eyes. I reckon its either an allergy or meningitis. Apparently I am a complete doctor these days. I say straight up that the battery isn't working. One of the daughters is ill and we have been focusing on her and I haven't used the bike in days, my friend probably left the light on. It hasn't happened before i tell him so i'm not really sure what to do. You can wait and i'll get a mechanic here or we can jump start it and you drive to one. He looks down at Crunchy, really down, as if he is a king and Crunchy is a little bit of poop he accidentally stepped on. 'This is only 2 months old!?' I cringe. Yeah, but its been through a lot, all the way through Peru, through the mountains, in the rain. He points out all the rust.

I push it down the road and jump start it. Crunchy struggles and for a second i think he won't kick into gear, but he does. Thank fuck. I drive him to the end of the road and instead of turning where i usually do i leave the road and turn so he cant see if Crunchy does cut out. I turn the wrong way on the roundabout and head back. When I park next to him i put Crunchy into neutral and he inspects him. I ask him if he wants to go for a ride and he hops on, telling me he's had 2 bikes before. I was hoping for an oblivious first timer. When he comes back he leaves Crunchy running and we both sit on the curb. I show him the papers and he starts reading through them all. I cringe that he is Ecuadorian with perfect Spanish because i know he will see the papers that say we have to return the bike to Peru after 2 months. He comments on this expiration date, but says no more, I assume he knows the process of transferring the Peruvian plates to Ecuadorian. It would cost him about $100 and probably be a bit of a ball ache. I ask if there are no bikes in Quito and he says yes there are some in the same price range but they are all really old. I start to scratch at the rust on Crunchys dirt protector, 'look it comes off' I say. Terrible sales women. He tells me that he teaches English 7 days a week and gets paid $4 an hour. I feel bad for charging him for the bike at all. One of his classes is in the valley and class terminates at 10pm and buses stop running at 9pm so he spend most of his wages on a taxi home. Wow, now i just want to give you the bike. Be strong.

$650 I had emailed him the day before when he tried to say he had $600 in cash. We cannot afford to go lower. Purely because we had to pay the mechanics to fix all of Crunchys injuries from the accident. He inspects the dirt guard i got mended yesterday and he can see its still bent and starts pushing it. I think if it breaks he better buy it. He then starts touching the chain which is looking pretty low, its almost completely leaning on the metal pole that holds the bike upright. He's noticing all Crunchys flaws so before he points out more i say, 'how about we call it $600 and you use the other $50 to fix anything that needs doing, there's a cheap mechanics up the road'. He says ok and hands me $500 from his pocket, then ruffles around in his wallet for the other $100. I say I'll grab you the 2 helmets and once i slide the big black front gate behind me I see French at the window. I dance inside, waving the $600. I tell her to count it and grab the helmet. I can't find the second because little Alejo was playing with it and now I don't know where its been hidden. I run around the house shouting Yahaira, looking in all the rooms. If i was a 5 year old boy where would i put a helmet. Then i see it outside hanging on a bicycle. I run back to him and hand him both. He asks for the bungee chords but i can't find them. I think the mechanic took them yesterday. I am cringing at how badly this sale is going, but i have the money so surely that means he's bought it. Papi arrives and shred some words with him. Him and Mami are going to drive him to the mechanics to show him it then head to the hospital to get Jessica checked out, the others have been squashed in the car this entire time.

I take a picture with the buyer and he zooms off. Thank god that piece of toe stealing crap is off our hands. Deep down thought I am sad such an amazing adventure has come to an end. I go back in and French is eagerly awaiting. She says all the money is there and we both smile that its sold, but both are sad we didn't have a proper goodbye. We decided it would be better for French to hide rather than the awkward conversation we would have when he see's her foot and asks what happened. 'Oh not much, just the bike you are buying ripped off her toe when we were actually driving really slowly uphill'.

Yahaira makes us breakfast; bread, yoghurt, apple and bread biscuits and the three of us sit at the table in the living room chatting. Camilla is tugging on my top so i give her a little hug with one arm and eat with the other. I'm teaching her how to cross her eyes and lift her eyebrows. Its day 2 of teaching and she's already a pro.

After breakfast I'm on Skype to Paul, my mum and she's talking about going to Marbaya or somewhere when Vanessa and Yahaira start screaming. Its raining and I assume the family clothes are hanging on the roof to dry. I tell Paul I have to go and I run upstairs after Yahaira, but when i get there she's already saved them all from the rain. We go downstairs and then I hear Vanessa screaming. I run to the kitchen and the ceiling is leaking. Her and Yahaira have 2 sauce pans each trying to catch the rain, but it is literally dripping from the entire roof. Next thing i know I'm outside the downstair bedroom with Vanessa and she is telling me to look. I see the bedroom door leaking too a little. Then she opens the door and when i look inside hers and Alejo's bedroom I can just see full power rain in the room. The roof has wooden planks along it and between every plank is a waterfall of rain. The floor is rising with water and it's leaking out into the corridor to the left that connects to the kitchen and the living room in front. And can see a slight slant in the floor and I can tell the living room will be full with water in minutes.

Vanessa and Yahaira are screaming in total panic and I can hear Camilla crying in the background. 'Its ok, Cami, don't cry' I shout. She's standing in the corridor, rain pouring on her. I take her hand and lead her to the living room where Frenchy is immobile on the sofa, water making its way to her. I tell her to keep her foot up on the sofa. She wants to help, but the floor will be way too dirty for her stitches. I run to the kitchen and Jessica is standing cooking, rain pouring down on her. She was given an injection at the hospital earlier and some tablets and I'm pretty sure she is completey drugged up and does not realise the severity of the situation. I look at her confused/ surprised and angry she's not helping. I run back to the bedroom because thats where most of the water is coming from. I grab a dust pan and brush and start scooping the water that is congregating in the tiled hallway and start emptying it into the saucepan next to me. When its full I run to the front door and throw it into the garden. The rain is so heavy. I feel sorry for the dogs, they looked scared but I can't let them in because theres too much water and they might jump on Frenchy. I keep scooping the water and the girls are still screaming, trying to catch droplets in their saucepans. This isn't working i think. Then i examine the house and see that the corridor outside the bedroom leads to the kitchen door and then curves and dips down to the front door. We have to brush the water out of the living room and bedroom, pushing it to the corridor then brush it round the corner and out the door. We will need all 3 of us, Frenchy can't help and Jessica is still in a daze cooking in the kitchen. I see a big broom and ask if they have another. Yes, but its at the end of the garden Yahaira says. I can see they are not venturing out so I open the front door and run to the end of the garden and grab it. I'm soaked in seconds. When i get back in the house I'm walking in the water, my shoes are soaking and I'm slipping everywhere. I give the broom to Yahaira and put her in position. She brushes the water from the living room to the corridor, I stop it from going back into the living room and Vanessa uses the dust pan to scoop it down the step and in tot he corridor. There's so much water and the rain won't stop. I can hear it pounding on the plastic above and Vanessa is completely drenched where she has gone in the bedroom. I start to think what we will do if this doesn't happen. I think of my friend Kitty asking me the day before to go to the Philippines with her to help volunteer after typhoon Yolanda. I put myself in their shoes when it attacked. I can tell the girls are still panicking so I continue to take control, I can tell the water would be going nowhere if it was just them here.

Every time they stop scooping i shout at them 'mas rapido'. More fast. We keep scooping for an hour. They have called Mami and Papi, but they are still not here, they are at work. They don't think its as serious as it is. I am thinking the girls must be drama queens in every day life for them not to take them seriously. I remember one time when I had a bath at home and there was a small patch of water on the ceiling and a puddle on the floor and when my mum came home she nearly cried at the sight of the puddle in her living room. I think about how she would react if this was her house. I ask if its the first time and they say yes. For some reason that makes me feel even more sorry for them as their house becomes more drench in water. I think if it happens often they are used to it, they know how to deal with it, know the drill, but the fact that this was the first time they had experienced it made it all that more scary and stranger to them. I think Jessica has stopped cooking and gone upstairs. I can hear a television and I think she must be either really stupid or completely drugged up. I ask where the electric mains are and they point to the wall under the stairs. I run over and flick all 5 switches off. I hear the television become mute. They shout to Jessica that I turned off the electricity. I run around and pick up all the cables from the wet floor and hang them on anything I can find. I tell the girls not to touch any electrics.

I find cardboard behind the mantle piece and I start to make borders in the doorways so the water doesn't leak back into the rooms and so it creates a path in which for it to flow when we mop it that way. I stand on a little piece of card to prevent me from slipping whilst i brush. Once most of the water is out of the living room I move onto the bedroom and me and Vanessa immediately devise an unspoken technique, she scoops from the corners and i channel it through to the corridor. After half an hour of this I tell Yahaira to scoop at the start of the corridor, passing it on to me then i push it round the corner and down the slope to the front door. The house in finally emptying. Once we've pushed the majority of it out we put t shirts on the end of our brooms and start to soak up the remaining water from the floor. 2 hours have past since the rain started and we are still scooping and mopping. Mami and Papi come home and you can see shock on both of their faces. Frenchy shoes them the videos she made and they watch in disbelief, tell us the flooding wasn't bad in town because there were so many hills, it must have been rushing downwards, out of their view. We quickly reinact the story, first Cami, then Yahaira then me. Mami and Papi laugh. Its incredible, I think. English people take over the news and stop their life when there is a centimetre of snow and here was this Ecuadorian family, water soaking through their huge TV, drenched through an entire double bed, soaked their daughters wedding dress, ruined the kids toys and they simply laugh. Mami heads to the kitchen to prepare lunch and Papi heads to the roof to examine the problem. Me, Vanessa and Yahaira continue to mop up.

We sit for lunch all sweating, knackered and we review the past 3 hours. The rain comes back but no one seems too panicked, the sky has cleared up a lot and Papi seems to have fixed the problem on the roof. We eat our rice, potatoes and chicken, dirty and soaking, wrapped up in blankets. When we are done Papi, Mami and Yahaira say a smiling chao and head off to work. I guess even when your house has just been swimming in rain there's still money to be made.

0 notes

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

When Mamma De Coobs Gets Involved.

15/11/13

When Mamma De Coobs Gets Involved.

1st night of proper sleep, if we can call it that. The image of the foot is disappearing from my head. I hide my eyes every time Crutches cleans my foot. I don't want to see it, I'm scared of my reaction. Today again Vanessa is being our little mummy. She makes us breakfast and brings it upstairs but we don't want to look like lazy princesses so we insist to have breakfast downstairs at the table.

Today is Friday. We decide to go to Canoa, on the coast where we were a few days before. The family is taking amazing care of us but we don't feel independent anymore. We can't do one step on our own, we can give up the idea of going for a walk outside by ourselves, even Crutches on her own. As soon as we get out of the room we are assisted people. Going to Canoa will be nice getting away to see the sun and a chance for us to socialise and see the outside world. I feel bad because Crutches has no reasons to be staying in the house resting, doing nothing, but she still does it because of me. We don't know how to announce the news to Vanessa that we're leaving for a couple of days, we know that it will break her heart. It's such a delicate situation. Anyway whilst eating breakfast we slide into the conversation that we are going to Canoa. She does the face but soon starts resarching bus times to Quito and from Quito to Canoa. Leaving at 5pm, we are sorted. Papi will take us to get the tickets after lunch then we can just wait at the shop until the bus arrives. We pack everything up, make the bed and go downstairs.

My sister, Titi rings me on Skype. I answer, she is with my 2 friends Inès and Noemie. They ask for a picture of my foot. Crutches send them one. Titi doesn't look at it but because Ines says it's disgusting, she tells her to send it to my mother.

My mum is calling me on Skype, she has just seen the picture and that's not the reaction I expected. 'Are you ok?' I ask. 'No I'm not ok at all Marie!! She says, have you seen your foot? It's not a toe you're missing it's half of your foot!!'. I go 'mum please don't panic me I haven't seen my foot yet'. She is panicking me. She says that I have to come home straight away. I have to see a proper doctor in France who will look at my foot and if there's anything to be done for it to look better it has to be done before the scare is formed. She says she is sending the picture to our good friend the professor Dupin to ask for his opinion. She asks that Crutches takes closed up photos of my foot for it to be examined in France. She also asks me to go to the hospital to ask for the medical history, everything that I have been done to me. I have never seen her in that state. I hung up.

Crutches and me go upstairs for the photoshoot, then it's lunch time. I'm not not hungry, I explain the situation to the family. No one is really talking, I think I've broke the atmosphere. I'm so preoccupied and don't know what to do. We're not going to Canoa anymore. I'm going home. The risk of infection post operation is very high, I can't take the risk. And maybe in France they'll make my foot look more beautiful. I check flight online, the earliest I can get to Paris is Monday morning, my dad is taking care of the insurance, I shouldn't have to pay to come back. I'm so confused and worried.

My mum rings me again, she talked to professor Dupin, she has calmed down. He is sending the pictures to his orthopedist friend and is waiting for a verdict. He says that the work looks clean but we never know what is under. I hang up again. I'm all disorientated. I want to talk to Dupin myself. It's too late to talk to him today, I'll ring him tomorrow.

I feel that Crutches is annoyed, she is not really talking. I finally ask her what she thinks, what I shall do, what she would do. In 10 minutes she puts me back into reality. We have been dealing with the foot for nearly a week now, we have a good hospital near us, we have an amazing family looking after us. I agree. The only thing we really need to be careful of is the infection, I'm under antibiotics, Crutches cleans the foot twice a day, the family is feeding me specific food. We are being adults here. I think about it for a couple of hours and more and more the idea of going home is leaving my head. I want to finish the trip we have started, I don't want to give up so close to the end. I don't want to leave Crutches. I leave taking the decision for after I talk to Dupin.

That night we're in the living room with all the sisters, Vanessa, Yajalla and Jessica who we finally get to know. She is so funny. We talk about dancing and she puts on a video of all different dances, samba, salsa, etc. We can see she really wants to dance but she is shy. Finally she is letting her body move. We're loving it, she makes us laugh. We have such a good evening, Yajalla carries on her millions questions about English. That evening keeps my head away from my torment.

When we go to sleep I tell Crutches I'm sorry that we are stuck here, she replies that she wouldn't want to be with anyone else and that she was only sad that I could possibly not be with her for the rest of the trip. I go to sleep thinking I'm not going home but I'll still talk to Dupin tomorrow. I sleep well that night.

#thefinalride #southamerica #south america #ecuador #motorbike #jans #amputation

0 notes

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

Phobias, Fluency & Inflamed Feet

14/11/13

Phobias, Fluency & Inflamed Feet

Today we woke up to Vanessa bringing us breakfast in bed. Toasties and crackers. I feel like we are princesses and although it makes me feel slightly awkward another human serving me breakfast as I lay in bed I just think about how lucky we are and dig in to the plates before me.

Once its consumed we then venture out of the house to get Frenchy some crutches. I directed the family car to the post op shop that I went to when Frenchy was in hospital to enquire about crutches. There were only 2 pairs of crutches available. One were a tiny pair and one were just a couple of centimetres above perfect. We took them. $40, not so bad, Papi managed to get a $1 discount.

We then went to a pharmacy and me and Vanessa jumped out to get French some alcohol solution and bandages to clean her foot. We drove around town after, looking onto the busy streets.

We then drive outside a little restaurant with a barbecue outside, smoking the vicinity, chicken and beef roasting on top. It smells amazing. Vanessa asks me to accompany her to the tienda, small little corner shops that you have to order things outside of the gate from. I go with her and little Alejo and the others wait in the car. Maria is getting some barbecued chicken for dinner. When me and Vanessa get back everyone is cramped in the car with big plates on their laps of chicken skewers and potatoes, everyone elbow to elbow. When we squeeze in we are Papi, Mami, Vanessa, Yajaera, Alejo, Camilla, French and me, 8 and 8 huge plates. We pass around the sauce and ice tea me and Vanessa just bought and we sit silently munching on the amazing barbecued chicken. I feel like we are a proper family out for the dinner. I love that we are eating dinner in the car. I can't say I have ever had a kitted out plated dinner in a car with 8 people before. The closest I would come is a McDonalds drive through on the way to the airport.

In the car on the way home we start talking about feminism, apparently a hot topic in my life that seems to make its way into most serious conversations. I start telling the family that English women are pretty independent and a lot are powerful, that we don't feel the need to marry young and many don't depend on men in their life. I was sounding like such a lesbian, but I think it accounts for hundreds of thousands of women back home. This past year has shown be just how independent and free the women of England are. How brave we are at taking on situations and fighting for our rights and how easy it is for us to become strong and powerful and respected by many, including men of all ages. I have experienced this in my job because most of the digital industry is made up of men. My university course was 80% men and about 75% wankers who looked down on you if you didn't live and breath computer code and if you had a social life. I also felt they tended to seclude the females on the course too, assuming we were not as technologically advanced as their gigantic brains.

I tell them about India and the repression of the women there and then we move on to arranged marriages and I tell them the same applies for many Indian women living in India and how I have family friends whose marriages were arranged. I ask if anything like this happens here in South America and they say no, 'all is for love' Yajaera says. We all agree that in our personal opinion we think marriage should be based on love. I never thought I would be having a serious conversation about the liberation of women and arranged marriages in India in the Spanish language. The family jokes and imitates me at the accident a week earlier only knowing two words; 'necesitamos ayudar'. We need help. And how i couldn't explain to them that she was being operated by a specialist the next day when they later visited in hospital. They all imitate me stuttering then my confused face every time they ask me a question. They all congratulate me on my current ability to now converse with them and be understood, even if i do talk like a four year old and they still don't understand much of what I'm saying.

When we get home it's time for the first foot cleaning session. I put on the surgical gloves i took from the hospital. Frenchy still hasn't looked at the foot, which I think is terrible. She is building it up in her head and making it into a huge deal and I feel like now the majority of the household conversation is about her not looking at her foot. I unwrap the stretch bandage then go to peel off the small squared material that covers the stitches. It is stuck to the stitches, as I thought it would be. I do a clockwise motion, slowly peeling the edges of the material away from the sharp stitches. I can't tell if it's just the stitches sticking, or blood as well. I dab a little water on the material to separate it from the last remaining stitch. Its off. The foot looks really swollen and completely dark blue, almost black the whole way around the stitches. I roughly count 15 stitches. There's hard blood around the stitches and a little bit of skin sticking up. This was the last thing that was stuck to the material. I contemplate cutting the bit of skin, but there are no scissors at hand. I soak some cloth with the alcohol solution and I gently dab in and around the stitches. She doesn't feel any pain which is amazing. I thought it was going to sting.

I proceed to clean the foot with alcohol, even between the toes and anyone who knows me knows my life long fear of other peoples feet, in between the toes being the most terrifying. Apparently when someone you love is only left with 9 toes being afraid of feet suddenly seems like a ridiculous thing so without further ado i stuck my fingers right in-between her swollen blue toes and start rubbing the dirt out. When i was satisfied no dirt was left and I blow on her foot to dry the alcohol then I put a new piece of material on her stitches and wrap the foot back up with the stretchy bandage. She asks me how it looks, I tell her its swollen and quite ugly with the stitches and blood. I don't want to hide her in a fairy bubble like in the hospital. It was ok to delay her knowing about the amputation because it meant she was well rested and calm the day leading to the operation, but now this was something that would be on her body forever and will probably look like frankenstein shit for a month or two so i was going to be brutally honest and prepare her for the day she finally looks at it.

Harsh, but what can I say, I'm a doctor these days.

(French) That night Vanessa gives me a herbal remedy to help me to sleep. I still don't sleep well but better than the other night, and the foot is not haunting me as much. I wake up every 2 hours, nose blocked, not able to breathe, my best sleep is always between 6am and 10 am these days.

#feminism #barbecue #crutches #breakfast #foot

1 note · View note

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

Guinea Pigs in Chimney Sweep Hats.

13/11/13

Guinea Pigs in Chimney Sweep Hats.

After lunch we decide to test Frenchy’s new wheels so we all squeeze into the family jeep and go to a nearby cemetery. Its beautiful, covered in big bushes that have been shaved into the shapes of different animals and characters. The cemetery is not like the ones at home, the bodies are not underground, they are in tombs stacked upon each other. Each individual tomb has a glass window with flowers and little gifts inside and an individual padlock on the outside. We push French around and she honestly looks like a cancer patient who is going to die in 3 days and is being shown where she'll live when she leaves us. All she needs is a blanket around her shivering legs. Little do we know at this moment in time that that will be happening soon. This moment is surreal, we have just got out of 4 days in hospital after a amputated toe and now we are with a wheelchair in a cemetery being shown carved bushes by an Ecuadorian family. I just look at Frenchy and laugh silently, she looks absolutely ridiculous. We make the entire loop of the bushes and then head out and drive around the town and they show us their shops and a few other spots, as well as the border to Colombia. That was supposed to be our final destination the day of the accident.

We head home and for dinner we are eating guinea pig. Lewis had already called someone hours before to prepare them for us. They were a delicacy here and only ate on special occasions. To me they were pets and no occasion was special enough for them to be eaten. Me and French are trying to nap upstairs after being fed loads of biscuits. Vanessa comes in and tells us the guinea pigs are ready. We go downstairs and there they are, two guinea pigs lying on the kitchen table, mouths wide open, sharp teeth visible, they look like they've seen a ghost. Maria is picking them up telling us to take photos. They look shiny and rock hard. The son and daughter, Jessica are now here and we introduce ourselves. Jessica is smiley and the son seems very shy. I keep catching him looking at us, but when we catch eye he quickly looks away. He is cute.

We sit and one of the sisters has brought a little hat for the guinea pigs because we joked about dressing them earlier. Maria puts a potato in one of the guinea pigs' mouth and now I'm staring face to face with a guinea pig wearing a chimney sweep hat nibbling on a potato. Maria takes a knife and starts roughly cutting the guinea pigs into sections. They sound so hard, I can't imagine any meat being inside. She pops my section onto my plate and the family laughs at my concerned facial expression, looking down on the dinner. I watch them all rip the hard plastic like skin off with their hands and start gnawing on it. I do the same but it’s so hard i literally cannot break it. I bite it with my teeth and instantly taste salt, so much salt. I don't like it. I wash it down with coca cola. My glass is empty; I'm going to have to tackle the rest of this beast and endure the after taste. When I remove the skin all I see is fat. The family has pretty much annihilated their sections; I’ll look rude if I don't annihilate mine, especially as they tell us they only buy these when it’s a birthday or their parents visit. I put as much in my mouth as I can then cover my potatoes with the mushroom sauce and quickly eat these after. Lewis says 'tranquilo'. I don't have to finish it. They know I can't. Really I'm just ridiculously stuffed from everything we've been fed today. They say we should go sleep so we kiss them all goodnight and head back to bed.

(French) That night is a horrible night for me. I wake up at midnight, my nose is completely blocked and I can't sleep. Earlier that day I was watching crutches pictures on her camera, she assured me there were no pictures of my foot, but accidentally I found one so I know vaguely what it looks like. Crutches showed me the photo hiding the big scare, we laughed so much, but tonight I don't find it funny anymore. The horrible picture keeps popping up in my head. I find the same feeling that I had in the ambulance, I hate myself and I hate that bike. I start crying, I cry for hours, Crutches wakes up and I snuggle into her body. At 5am I finally find some sleep.

#cuy #guinea pig #cemetery

0 notes

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Video

The Snip. Pre Amputation.

1 note · View note

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

The Salazar family

13/11/13

The Salazar family

I spend the night sleeping in Frenchys bed, on the edge, as to not touch her foot. I finally sleep for more than 20 minutes. I wake up to nurses attending to her and I sleepily jump down and move to the brown reclining chair to let them do their thing. I read an email from Vanessa saying her mum, Maria, has sorted a wheelchair for Frenchy so know need to worry, sending love, good night. This family cannot be any more perfect. With Adeline's words of yesterday in my head 'Vanessa's family are good people, I trust them with my life, you can trust them too, they are good friends', we decide today we will go and stay with them. I think they will provide the perfect place for Frenchy to recuperate.

(French) Last night I was feeling ready to look at my 4 toes foot but after the dream of last night I don't want to look at it anymore. I wake up quite depressed. The doctor comes and cleans my foot, Crutches is still asleep. I can go. That raises up my mood, I eat breakfast whilst Crutches is still asleep and whilst the doctor is telling me about all the medicine I have to take. When Crutches wakes up, she makes me a better breakfast. She goes to the kitchen to steel 2 bowls and 2 spoons. Fruits, yogurt and Nutella! We finally pack up and the nurse comes to pick me up in a wheelchair!

We say our goodbyes and go down to reception where we call Vanessa, our sister who has been sorting out all our paper work and visited us every day at the hospital.

10 minutes later she shows up with her sister, Maria (who I haven't seen since the accident as she wasn't allowed to visit me), and our dad!! I'm so happy to see him. He is pushing an empty wheelchair for me. We give them all big hugs. As if they all came and pick us up when we thought we were just going to have to take a taxi to a hostel. They put me in the wheel chair, Maria doesn't make me do one move by myself, and Papi pushes me to the car followed by the rest of the family. I get put into the passenger sit of the car. The same front sit I was sitting 3 days earlier waiting for the ambulance to come, with blood dripping down my foot. They have cleaned the blood from the car. Papi is driving; the 4 women squeeze at the back. Oopsy. They only live down the road. We arrive at their house. It a big pink house with a big black gate and a big black dog, (later on we also meet the big white rabbit).

We sit on the sofas, Crutches, Papi, Vanessa and I. The younger sister and Maria go to the kitchen. They come out of it and serve us cake and juice. It's the birthday cake of 'Alejo', Vanessa's 5 years old son, who soon shows up in the living room. He has a husky voice and is very tanned. I remember him from the accident. He was in the car with me. Vanessa says that he has been asking how I was. He is shy but after a couple of hours he becomes mine and Crutches bestie. Vanessa will share with us the next day that Alexandro had a little brother, but he passed away when he was 3 month old. Alexandro's father is a famous singer in Ecuador but didn't apply to his father duties and let Vanessa down. She didn't sleep for 6 month and had to be followed by a psychologist. I'm thinking that her family must have been an amazing help. They are all so close and spend every moment of the day together.

The Salazar family runs a business that Maria and Papi created 20 years ago. They make and sell insides for cars. They have three shops in town. One is run by Papi and Maria, that's where the manufacture of the products happens. They are specialized in sit covers. They have a young boy working in the manufacturing room upstairs and Maria and Papi work downstairs. Maria is an adorable woman, her mother is Colombian and her dad is Ecuadorean. They met at the border. Maria doesn't talk much, and applies to her housewife / motherly role with all her heart. She is always is the kitchen preparing us amazing food and she doesn't let me do one step on my own. I've taken her front sit in the car for the time we are staying with the family and she has to squeeze with rest of the family at the back. I've been trying to get her to sit at the front but nothing to do, she wouldn't.

Papi is a skinny 48 years old handsome man, with brown skin and dark hair. He has built a big united family, a business that runs the town of Tulcan where we are, but also a Colombian town called Ipiales, about half an hour across the border. He has got a great sense of humor. His mother passed away a month ago. So according to the tradition he will wear black clothes for the next year.

Another shop a bit further up in town is run by Jessica the oldest sister and the youngest brother who is 18. We don't know Jessica much; she has been working the whole time we've been with the family. She is 28 and has a daughter, Camilia who is 5 and looks exactly like her mum. Camilia is funny; she looks at me in a really weird way all the time. I wonder what she thinks of me. She has seen my foot on a picture and wasn't impressed at all. She seems to think it looked like a normal foot. Thanks Camilia. The brother is quite unfamiliar to us as well. He doesn't talk much, just like his mother. He has left us his room for our stay here. His room is decorated of pictures of him and his girlfriend.

The last shop is held by Vanessa, 24 and her younger sister 21. Vanessa is a feminine woman. She's got long black hair and always wears heels. She is the one who has been looking after us the most, she hasn't been to work since she met us, too busy sorting out our messy lives for us. She is constantly taking pictures of us. She is more involved in our recovery than us ourselves. We owe her big time. Her sister is my favourite although I still don't remember her name. It's a complicated name that we never heard of before. She is very smart, funny, and energetic and loves speaking English. She pops up in conversations every time she knows the English translation for a word. She has got an enormous rabbit that her boyfriend gave her as a present. He is called Pakito (the rabbit). Her and Vanessa are very close. They took an English course together a year ago and we can see that they really want to learn. They ask the English translation for everything we're talking about now.

#family #ecuador

0 notes

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

Frankenstein

12/11/13

Frankenstein

Last night's sleep mostly consisted of being kicked in the head by the nurse as she tended Frenchy’s drip. I'm pretty sure she was doing it on purpose so I'd move out of the way. I slept a couple of hours, on and off, tucking my head inside the sleeping bag to keep warm. 6am and the lights are on and the loud nurses and metal utensils are in full operation. It's morning, there's no point trying to sleep when this hospital begins its day, they won't let you with their constant floor mopping, interviewing, drip changing, dinner serving, random visitations.

(Frenchy)The doctor comes in, he unwraps my foot, I can't watch. Crutches watches, I’m trying to read her face 'How is it?' There's a moment of silence then she goes 'yeh it's good'. I don't know what to think. Then she says that there's more missing that she expected. I don't react to that. I saw the hole in my foot, it doesn't surprise me they had to take more out, but still I can't bring myself to watch it.

(Crutches) Today I felt like a little celebrity walking through the hospital, you can't pass a person without a 'buenos dias, buenos trades, buenos noches', they are too friendly to not acknowledge others existence. We have volunteers come in the room and gives us biscuits and sit and chat, asking what happened then asking about our lives and what we were doing, then we have the two cleaners who chat to us every day come and sit with us and a male nurse who’s changing Frenchy’s dripping drip. There's water leaking all over her bed. He changes her sheets and I hold her gown, covering her little white arse. The three nurses are obviously friends and you can tell they love working together. I think they like us too, they know we can handle banter and joke around with us.

Then comes Adeline, our beautiful, smiling doctor, who seems to check in on French whenever she can. We love her, she's always with the biggest smile and calm voice. She always finishes with 'tell me if you feel any pain, I will come back and check on you in a bit'. We love her more.

Then visits Vanessa. I finally know her name. The girl of the family who saved us after the crash and visited us every day, Maria's daughter, the one in her late twenties who had the little boy on her lap in the car to the hospital. It turns out her and Adeline are good friends. Vanessa's boyfriend works at the hospital. She was amazing, she had visited us three days in a row and she always arrives with the biggest kiss on our my cheek and a big hug. I feel like my family is here. It's the first time she's seeing French since the snip and she is touching her face, gives her a hug.

Then in walks in the lovely, but slightly unwanted visitor, the social worker, instantly asking about our insurance for the motorbike. I ask her if there are any problems, she's filling out forms with Frenchy’s passport in hand once again. I ask if we will have to deal with the police, she says no, do we have to pay for the operation, she says no. Relief. I will take care of that, I deal with the insurance in France. She just needs the insurance documents. The family didn't bring it, we don't have it, but we do have it on email, I can print it. Ok, perfect, she takes me away and we get in a lift and walk somewhere in the hospital i haven't been before. I walk into an office with an administration sign above. She sits me at a computer and I print off Frenchy’s insurance documents. She's joking around so I'm not too concerned. Then as we are about to leave the office with the papers Vanessa and Adeline are outside. The social worker pulls me in a room and they enter too, closing the door. Things seem serious. She tells me to sit down and the three of them start talking rapidly in Spanish. When they are done I look to Adeline who speaks perfect English, 'is there something wrong?'I feel like I'm in an interrogation room. Adeline says I need to go with Vanessa to the police station and file a report about the accident. I need to stay here for when the doctor comes though because I need to find out exactly how to deal with Frenchy’s foot once we leave; how many times to clean it a day, what to clean it with, if she should sleep with a bandage, does she need crutches, how long for, will she need painkillers, when can she shower it, when does the stitches come out. In a few days I'll be the nurse and I want to get everything right. They agree that Vanessa will go to the police station to file the report. She takes the insurance documents and Frenchy’s passport photocopy in her hand. Adeline explains this is the first time this has happened, a foreigner in a transit accident so they need to get the police to write up a report so the hospital can then file a report.

We all head back to Frenchy’s room together, the social worker, Soyara stopping every two seconds to say hello to the doctors and nurses and kiss them on the cheek, she was the most popular person in the hospital. Vanessa spends the day talking with the social worker and doctors, sorting paper work for us then goes to the police station and sorts out our report. She is incredible, our new mummy. She shows us every day looking beautiful with a make up'd face, high heels and shiny black hair. When she comes back she says it’s all sorted and she will sort out some way to put Crunchy on a truck and drive him the hour to here to save us from having to deal with collecting him when Frenchy is out. She asks if we have any dirty clothes for her to take home. Obviously all of our clothes are dirty and stink, in fact I washed my bikini pants in the hospital sink yesterday just so I'd have clean pants for today because my other 2 pairs were hanging off the side of Crunchy because i had tied them to dry the day of the accident and getting them didn't seem so important when Frenchy’s toe was winking at me. We politely say its ok, we have plenty of clothes. She also says that we will go to their family house when Frenchy is out and rest there. She is our family. Our Ecuadorian family and we need her. She kisses and hugs us one final time and leaves, saying she will return tomorrow and for me to make sure I'm here so she can take me to town to get money for crutches.

She leaves and a bit later returns Adeline, she's now in her own clothes, her shift is over that started at 5am yesterday. It was now 5pm the following day. She's come to check on Frenchy one final time, looks at her now unwrapped toe and say its good, that she won't even miss the toe. Obviously she's just being nice, the foot looks awful and there's not just a little toe missing, there's a huge chunk underneath it and there's metal bloody stitches poking out in all directions and a mahoosive mother humping scar. She writes down her number and email address and says you call me any time, if you need anything, even just a translation at 2am, I will be there. I love Ecuador

#scar #Hospital #police #family #nursing

0 notes

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

The Snip

11/11/13.

The snip.

I finally close my eyes at 5am and ten minutes later the lights go on, so bright and in walks a cleaner, mop in hand, 'Buenos dias'. Are you fucking kidding me. 5am is not morning, go away. She mops the floor slowly then walks out, leaving on the light. I hate her, but i nod off. I am awoken an hour later to many 'Buenos dias''. Its the nurses. The window is shining brightly and those bright bloody lights are still on above us. The nurse begins to change Frenchy's sheet as they are covered in blood where her foot is. She's slept well and she seems happy. I am happy too, but I know I am going to have to tell her soon about her pinky. A doctor arrives at 7.30am. He is the specialist we have been waiting for. He inspects her foot and the first thing he says is 'not good' and of course Frenchy hears this, the thing I have been avoiding her hearing the past 15 hours. Then he says it, just right there, direct and to the point, no softness in his voice, no toning down of the news, 'we have to cut your toe'. He looks to me, 'understand'. 'Si, si', I reply, 'solo uno, si'. Yes only one. Frenchy is covering her face with her hands not to see her foot and I don't think she makes out what we say. She looks at me when me and the doctor finish talking and says whats happening. They will remove your little toe I say. 'My toe! Their going to remove it? What, oh my God Crutches.' I say it will be alright and she replies the best reply; 'well at least its not my finger'. She doesn't cry, in fact we look at each other and laugh, 'this is ridiculous'. I tell her rockstars have 9 toes and she laughs. I'm so happy she's taking it well.

The doctor begins to talk about what he will do and i lower my hands, signalling for him to talk gently then i begin to walk out of the room hoping he will follow, but he doesn't, it seems he has to be somewhere. He asks French some quick questions in English and I answer them. When he leaves the room I run after him. I whisper to him 'is cutting the toe the only solution?' He holds my left arm tight, 'it is the only solution. It is bad, the toe and we have to remove it. She has to be aware that it is really serious'. I understand and say I will explain to her the situation. I ask about the future, 'will it affect her walking?' No he says, she will be able to walk. I go back into the room and explain to French that removing it is the only solution. I can see her getting a bit anxious, but she is handling it like an absolute rockstar, she just keeps saying it could be a lot worse, and yes we are in an absolutely shitty situation, but she's right, it could be worse. We could have hurt someone else, she could have lost her foot, an eye. We assess the accident and agree we got off lightly. He wraps her foot back up and she's feeling some pain. I go down the corridor in search of pain killers. Apparently there is some slowly entering her blood stream through her drip.

A woman comes in with a name label attached to her chest. I read trabajar social. Social worker. She explains she's here to talk about the crash and investigate what happened. She asks about SOAT and we both become nervous. We say we have international insurance. We don't, so in reality we are not covered at all, on the road or medically in the event of a crash. She's talking about papers and who was driving and when she quickly pops out of the room we whisper 'we're fucked'. 'Lets not lie' French says. Her moral ways aren't going to help pay for the operation. She then holds her face and curses. What, what? I think my insurance has run out. 'Are you serious? After all that happening with mine in Cuzco?' We left a year ago the 7th November, it was now the 11th, her annual insurance was up. We say we will lie and say the motorbike was 125CC, not 150CC, as French thinks her international licence covers 125. I run downstairs to get wifi and French messages her insurance saying she wants to renew it, hopefully it will renew immediately and we can try and say the accident happened today. I know this won't work and I know it's going to be expensive; 2 ambulances, untold antibiotics, pain killers, X rays, inspections, a room, an operation, a couple of nights in the ward. The dollars were rising. French starts to get upset, worrying about what we'll do and the social worker.

The social worker returns and we begin to chat, she is hilarious and constantly joking around. This makes us think its not as formal as we think and the police may not get involved, despite our bike being dropped at the police station for us to pick up by the red truck yesterday. She fills out loads of forms about how it happened, where it happened and what sort of documents we possess. We lied a lot. She leaves when she is satisfied and by then we are getting along well, I think she is on our side. Its strange the way the first few moments of contact with a superior worker you instantly think they are against you, like their trying to catch you out.

Three hours pass then a new bed is here and she has the blue standard theatre hat on. We stroll her to the lift, me and a nurse push her to theatre. She gets an injection in her bum in the corridor on the way, some sort of antibiotics to prevent infection. We laugh at her bare arse out. Suddenly their telling me I can't go in, you must stay here. They wheel her through before I even get to say bye to her face. The doors are closing and the windows are not see through. I shout 'everything will be ok pupuce, I'll be here waiting for you ok'. I hear a nervous ok and the doors are shut. I head back to the room, shower, clean all the gashes i seemed to have accumulated in the past two days on various parts of my body and get into some new clothes. My whole bag is dusty from the ditch we fell in and my white tops are now brown. I grab one and throw it on, it smells stale, but i still feel fresher. Now i'm sitting in the small reclining chair waiting for my Frenchy to come out. I want to go stand outside the theatre doors to be there as soon as she's out, but she should be out any minute and I don't want to miss her in the lift and not be in the room when she returns. The doctor said it would be 40 minutes to an hour and it has already been 1 hour 8 minutes.

I nod off and wake up. Its 11.30, she's been in an hour and half. I walk down the corridor, down the stairs, down another corridor and go outside the surgery room. There's a bunch of people waiting outside, the families of other people in surgery i assume. They grab at me and start saying things i don't understand. I pick up 'de corberon' and say Marie, my friend, she has come out? No no 'ella es aca'. She's still inside. They usher me to sit down and i join them. They start asking me questions in Spanish about what happened. I explain about the crash and Frenchy getting her toe cut. They are laughing that we are just two girls on 1 bike travelling South America. I feel comfortable with them. The group of people is made up of four different families, but they all seem like one big family and I have just joined it. I sit chatting with them for an hour or two. The doctor said the operation went well, she has lost the bone but she is well, I assume he means she's lost the toe. She will be out in 30 minutes. I wait longer with the families. I am asking how easy it will be to sell my bike and they explain no one wants Chinese bikes here, they are know for being slow and crush like plastic, basically shit and unsafe. We all laugh at how crap and unwanted the bike is and one of the sons of Maria, the old woman who shares the ward room with Frenchy, makes a joke that the Chinese bike gives you chinky eyes and thats why we crashed. He tells me he has a farm with horses and offers me one saying it will be a lot faster than our RTM modelled bike. We all laugh. I ask the security guard where my friend is and he says she will be in recuperation for two hours, as will the brother of the other family I am now chatting with. We all agree we can leave and come back and they invite to show me where a restaurant is. We exit the hospital grounds and one block down enter a tiny local restaurant with about five tables. We are four separate groups; a family of three siblings, their brother is recuperation with French, he had a hip replacement, one of the two brothers (Maria's son), another middle aged man whose sick family member i did not know of, and myself.

The tables were tiny with four small chairs so we split up, I sat with the 3 sibling, 2 women and 1 man. We had the usual local food of 2 courses; soup and then rice, potatoes, beef and salad. I was stuffed after the soup, but the second course was so good it was gone in seconds. When we got up to leave i asked 'how much' and the brother put his hand up, 'we pay'. I insisted no, but he wouldn't accept my money. I felt like I was with my family. I was loving Ecuador and it's people more than any other country i'd experienced at that moment in time. We head back and I resume my position outside the operating theatre. It's now after 2pm. I still have an hour to wait so i awkwardly and uncomfortably lie my bony body down on the metal stools and nod off. I wake up to a nurse talking to me and i see a bed in front and light hair, i think its Frenchy so i collect my stuff from under the stool, the nurse is still talking to me, I'm just saying 'Si, si'. People around are laughing at me, the nurse says that isn't Frenchy, I'm confused, I put my stuff back down, lay on the stool and drift off again.

I'm woken again and this time to Frenchys face in a bed in front of the operating theatre doors. She's smiling. I bounce off the stools and I'm smiling so much I go to her and she says 'give me a kiss', I kiss her on the cheek and stroke her head, hug her and she begins to tell me all about the past four hours. She was given an epidural and was awake throughout the whole thing. I can't believe it, I always thought of an epidural as a serious and generally unwanted thing only used in pregnancy. I can't believe she was awake. I feel like the hospital wasn't professional, but who am i to know what procedure should be carried out. She continues to tell me about her experience.

#hospital #tulcan #amputation #motorbike #rockstars #snip

1 note · View note

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Video

19 Toes.

0 notes

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

19 Toes - Crutches Rendition.

10/11/13.

19 Toes - Crutches Rendition.

Just yesterday we were saying what we would do if the Colombian Guerrilla fighters jumped out with guns on the road between Ipiales and Cali whilst we were on our bike. This was a common happening at the moment on the route we would begin tomorrow. I said i'd drive on. Frenchy said she's stop. We agreed Frenchy's answer was probably wiser.

But it wasn't Colombia that shot us down. It was our beloved Ecuador that took a big rifle and fired it right up Frenchy's arse. Where to begin. Today is a story that is so unique I honestly don't think I will ever tell one like it again. It is a story that says goodbye to a lot of good things in our life, a story that, just when i thought wasn't possible, brings me and Frenchy even closer and a story that i think will haunt me for the rest of my life.

It begins like every other day, packing up and riding forth. We make a stop for oil and i sit next to a one eyed dog with a huge scar across his head watching the mechanic drain Crunchy. There's a black man wandering around waiting for his tuk tuk to be fixed, he has boils all over his arms and face. The entire ride is beautiful. We are driving through the most incredible villages. It seems like every next village we pass the people are getting darker, until there are no lighter skinned people, like in Canoa, anywhere to be seen in the villages. There's coconuts and reggae music everywhere. I feel like I'm in Jamaica. We pass about four football matches and it seems the whole town is there to watch it. They pause and stare as the two white girls in minimal clothing drive past. Our drive keeps taking us back and forth to the coast and the water is blue and for the most part there are no huts at all on the beach, just miles of sand.

I literally cannot tell how these villages are, whether they are rare to visitors, but happy and welcoming or whether it is unsafe to the outsiders. I feel the former, until we get to one village and it begins with some sort of military tent. There's a few soldiers sitting there then when we drive into the village we pass two different groups of military men walking down the street with rifles hanging on their back. Its not so scary when its the military holding them, I guess its expected. Then a bit further up the hill we see three kids about our age, two girls and a boy. The girls have short black afros, as does the boy. They are laughing and having fun, but in each of their hands is a very long, sharp machete. Now I'm gearing towards the latter. I look around and i feel like I'm in Rwanda. Throughout the rest of the journey we keep seeing local men in shorts, maybe a vest top, maybe not, with shot guns in their hands. What they were for I have no idea. I like to think hunting.

We're driving down an empty road when we see a local man taking pictures on the road. He's with some kids. He signals for us to look. I look at the trees on the right hand side thinking I'm going to see a monkey or something, but I see nothing. Then I turn around and look at the big branch we have just dodged and shout for Frenchy to turn around. Its a snake! It must have been high in those trees above and the branch broke. There was water around the branch and the snake was still next to it, curled up in a ball. We drove as close to it as we dared and the man warned us it was very dangerous, very venomous. I just wanted to poke it with the branch and get a reaction, see its face. We stood and watched a huge truck pass over it, we signalled him it was there and he had slowed down, but his wheel missed it by centre metres. It twitched and its body lifted into the air. We stared amazed for a bit longer then drove off, passing it extremely close. I felt like i was in full nature. I literally was just thinking earlier in the day about the snakes i had seen in the past in Thailand and how much my friend Flaps absolutely hated them and how i teased her so much in the Mexican rainforest about them that she ended up pissing off our high wooden shack balcony instead of venturing through the grass to the toilet.

We had been driving for about 4 hours. We weren't sure if the man we had asked at the petrol station at the start of our day had said that it was 4 hours to San Lorenzo then an hour to the boarder or if he said it was 4 hours then another 5. We were dreading the latter, but as we approached a sign 'Tulcan 220km' we realised it was the latter and a break to re energise and prepare ourselves for 4 more hours of sitting was in need. We pass a little house with a bbq outside with chicken cooking on it and a beautiful black woman waving the smoke into the road. Music was blaring, the same R&B as in Attacan. We stopped outside, said a smiley hello and asked for 2 cokes then decided the chicken smelt too good to pass. I could tell Frenchy was disheartened by the thought of driving another 4 hours, but we knew we had to get as close to the border as possible. Our original morning plan of actually getting across the border had now transformed into a night in Tulcan then an early morning border cross. We said thank you and the first hour began. We were over 3 hours in and I think Tulcan was another 40 minutes, give or take. The scenery had changed completely, it was looking more like Peru.

I had stopped an hour before to longboard down some of the mountain hills and whilst skating on a flat road I think the stupid sport trainers i bought in LA that i was forced into buying by a foot specialist then a doctor i met in my hostel dorm because apparently my feet are a retarded shape and the skate shoes i wear are encouraging them into a future life of disfigurement. Slightly dramatic (they were American), I gave in and bought geeky walking trainers and it felt like i was skating with high heels. So my foot trips on the wheel and I go flying forward. Some part of me must have thought of my shoulder because I made no attempt whatsoever to put out my arms in protection. So all I had left to protect my fall was my face. I hit the cement and feel it graze across my lip and eye like sand paper. I think fuck. Then the knees crash down. I lay face down, roll over and begin what i feel what has now become the aftermath routine. First i check the left shoulder. Its in its rightful socket. Then i check the other shoulder, because apparently now this is a new issue and more than likely will eventually happen to the right one too. My right one is grazed. Then i check the knees. They are in their sockets, but they are both bleeding. Then i feel my lip ring, I feel a slight cut on my lip, then my nose, its fine. I feel my eye and i feel a graze and also a graze on my chin, my jaw is a bit sore. Then my palms, both cut, knuckles, cut, wrist, cut and actually the sorest part of my glass body. My casio watch is scraped and looks like an absolute rockstar. I get up and the board rolls away, I really want to let it roll away, but I see a car coming so I chase after it, swearing at it. I kick it to the side and French comes asking if I'm ok, if the shoulder is alright. Yeah yeah, I walk off the pain. I don't think I'm much of a talker when I'm in pain I've realised, I just like to go away and talk my way out of the pain.

My glasses are broke which saddens me the most, especially after French made me the coolest macramé string with bells on it to hold my glasses round my neck. I try to superglue them and end up gluing the glue to my hand and gluing my fingers together. Not my day i think. I jump on the bike and can feel my eye pounding. Black eye tomorrow.

Then the finale. The actual story. We are driving through the mountains an hour after and I notice my eye in the right hand wing mirror. I say to Frenchy look at my eye and I show her in the mirror. She turns her head 180 degrees to see and as soon as her head reaches that last degree I see the bike heading to the right. 'Watch out' I say, but it's too late. She tries to turn, but the bike is already falling down the V shape ditch that travels all along the right hand side of the road. It's not that deep, like 4 feet but we're already at the bottom and driving forward. I see a white reflector pole in the ground smack into the bike then into Frenchy's chest and the front of the bike jolts to the floor. Without thinking I lift my knees to my chest, get my feet on the ground and start pulling Frenchy from under the bike. I can't tell if its on her, but i'm just thinking about the exhaust. I pull til we're both out and away. We check our bodies. 'Are you ok, are you ok' i yell at her. Yeah yeah she replies. I think thank god. Then she cries out, 'no I'm not ok, oh fuck, oh fuck, my foot'. I look down and I see a big hole in her leather brown shoes then I look inside and i see her foot ripped open and her bone sticking out. 'Don't look, don't look French' i shout and i run to the road, shaking, sore, I run to the van full of people passing. I recognise them as the people that took a picture of us earlier down the mountain. 'Necesitamos ayudar, necesitamos ayudar'. We need help! For a second i think they are going to drive off and I don't blame them, there is absolutely no space in their cramped van, what can they do. 'Por favour, por favour', please please! They see the panic in my eyes and they all jump out, there must of been about 15 of them. They run over to French and a man who looks like a red Indian with long hair heads straight for Frenchys foot. I tell him to keep it elevated and I grab the pillow French bought to soften her bum against the bikes seat yesterday. I roll it up and put it under the foot. He lifts up her shoe and we both untie her laces. He softly removes her shoes and i can't fucking believe it. There's a huge hole in the middle of her foot, her little toe is hanging off and I can see right through to the bone.

The first thing I think is that she's losing the foot, part of it for sure, the last toe 100%. She's crying out that the wind is hurting her foot. I try to protect it, but I don't know what I'm doing. Everyone looks down and their faces drop, they cover their eyes with their hands and start saying things in Spanish. I'm shouting for a telephone, but I don't understand anything their saying. Their checking if I'm ok, they see the cuts I got earlier and think it happened just now, but I'm ok I tell them I just need an ambulance now for my friend. Me and two men pick up Frenchy, I'm telling her please don't look at your foot, she promises me she won't. I cover her eyes anyway, I'm scared she'l look accidentally and start crying and not be able to stop. We put her in one of the cars that has stopped to help. It is an Ecuadorian family, a man, a woman, one woman in her late twenties maybe and a girl in her late teens. They have a little boy with them who is too young to know whats happening. A guy from the van comes up to me, he hugs me and says something reassuring i don't understand. Another comes and checks on me and I tell him she's French and he begins to exchange words with her. She's sitting in the passenger side with her foot down. I'm worrying about the blood loss and know it should be elevated. I try to make her put it high, but she knows she will see it so she doesn't. I'm asking for painkillers and a lady comes with some and water and gives it to French. She has people around her caring for her so I quickly help 3 men pick Crunchy out of the ditch. There's blood all over the longboard and some on the floor. I'm feeling dizzy and shaking loads, I am thinking the worst for her foot. I try to start Crunchy, but he won't. His foot brake is dented in and the back of his exhaust has fallen off. Someone hands me it and I tuck it into the bag on the front of the bike. After a while Crunchy gives a little gas and starts, but he's struggling. I turn him off and when i try again in the same gear, first, he jumps forward and falls on the floor. Everyone jumps at this and it makes me shake more. I leave the men to play with him and run back to French. I tell her it's fine there's not a lot of blood, the ambulance will be here soon, you will be ok.

'Can we drive? We need to go now, she needs a hospital. How far is it?' Twenty minutes they tell me. I want a good hospital, the best. They tell me Tulcan is the best, it is forty minutes away. We will go there i demand. Next thing i know one of the men from the van drops to the floor. We all run towards him. He is face down in the ditch not moving. I think he's dead. Frenchy shouts 'was this us?' No, no, of course not, don't worry French just try to relax. The men pick up his body and it is completely limp, his body dangles. This is too much, everyone panics. They gently lower him to the floor. I run back to French, hold her hand. Then i run back to him. 'Is he ok?' I ask. They tell me his epileptic and I am happy he is not dead. I look down and he has a pen in his mouth to stop him biting his tongue, he is shaking a bit, but his eyes are open. I give them space. I see them with an injection, I assume this happens often. A few minutes later he is slowly coming around, he looks confused, scared and fragile. I want to hug him, but I run back to the car to French. I look down at her foot and there's blood all over the black mat. Where is the ambulance? Please, we need to drive. The red truck that the people had flagged down are taking your motorbike, it is too dangerous to drive says the red Indian man. ok, thank you so much. He tells me they have to go. I run around thanking them all, shaking their hands. They all give me tight hugs and say good luck, they are so concerned. The family with the white car that French is in pack our bags into their boot and tell me to get it. Thank you, thank you i repeat. Two men run back, the red indian and the French speaking guy. The red indian makes Fenchy write down her email, he wants to check she is ok and the French guy hands Frenchy a piece of paper with his email and number, 'if you need anything please call me'. The fifteen squeeze into the van and pull off.

We are driving to the hospital says the family. I'm holding Frenchy's hand, the pain is kicking in, its getting worse she says. She's not crying though. I always thought she would be a cryer in pain, but she is absolutely handling the situation like a warrior. I'm in awe of her.

We start driving, its me, French, the man and the woman in her late twenties with the little boy on her lap. I don't know where the woman and the teenager are, they must have two cars. We drive for about 15 minutes and the ambulance catches up. I tell French to close her eyes, i know the paramedics will look at the foot concerned and this will terrify her. They look down and yes its bad. We pick her out of the car and put her on a stretcher. Keep your eyes closed is all I keep repeating. She's starting to get pale, I don't know if it's the shock or blood loss. They put her in the back, there's no room for me, I hate them for not letting me stay with her. I tell the family i'll meet them at the hospital and i jump in the front with the male paramedic and the female paramedic joins French in the back. I shout through the glass window and bang but i get no reply it must be sound proof. The paramedic explains to me that she needs to go to Tulcan, but they cannot take her there, they will take her to one hospital and a bigger ambulance will take her on to Tulcan. I'm getting stressed at the thought of the hours it is already being prolonged. We have gone off road and construction means we are on yet another bumpy dirt track. I am imagining Frenchy banging in the back, the toe hanging off. The paramedic tells me the hospital in Tulcan is good, has specialists and is not too expensive. I try to ask about the toe, but I don't think he knows.

After thirty bumpy minutes we arrive at the first hospital. I run out of the truck and around to French. I help lift her bed out of the back of the ambulance and wheel her in. Everyone stares. There are five doctors waiting. One funny looking fat one with crooked teeth, one evil looking woman I turn out to hate, and then some other ones, maybe there were seven. They pull the curtain and inspect. They all look concerned, but they are joking around laughing with each other and this is all Frenchy can hear. I tell her, 'see they are laughing, they are calm, its not that bad'. Frenchy is as white as a ghost now, her lips have no colour. I go through the curtain and start asking for morphine. They just stare blankly at me. I ask for pain killers, tell them she is in a lot of pain. They are putting a drip in her and instantly pump it with an injection of pain killers. Her body is completely shaking and I feel like she's going to start cunvulsing. They begin to pour some sort of liquid over her open wound and she screams. She begins to let out cries, but there are no tears, it is too painful to cry properly. I hold her hands and face and try to take her away, talking about the beach and Christmas and making jokes about the funny looking doctors. She cries with little laughs in between. My heart is breaking.

When Frenchy explained how horrible it was for her to watch me in hospital I didn't understand as much until now. I wanted to do anything to turn back time, to just get her out of this bed and be at dinner with our twenty toes drinking red wine and plotting against the thieves in Colombia. I wanted to take away her pain, 'more painkillers, please, give her more'. They start to wrap up her foot in a bandage and I think the painkillers are kicking in, she's calming down. The woman from the family arrives. She's called Maria. I feel like she's our mum, she comes in and holds Frenchy's hand and begins to talk calmly to her, it's as if she's nursing her own child. I leave her quickly as the evil nurse is pulling me to sign papers. She makes me write my name and passport number on the back of 10 yellow sheets. On the other side is something i don't understand. I ask 'Que es eso', what is this? Medicacion she replies. She can't have been given this much medication already. Maybe it is what they will give her. I have no choice but to sign them. They keep presenting me with more papers, asking her name, passport number, residence, my name and passport number, how we know each other, where we're going, how it happened.

I return and Frenchy is panicking about the insurance. We both know we are not covered if there's ever an accident on the bike because neither of us have a licence. I tell Frenchy to tell them that I was driving, don't say you were driving otherwise you won't be covered. She's getting scared at the thought of lying, 'I don't want to lie, whats the point?' The point is you'll have to pay, I'm insisting she lies, but i can tell she will panic and say she was driving when they ask. I tell her not to worry, I have money, we will pay for the treatment together. I can tell she still doesn't think its that bad, but i tell her insurance is the last thing we have to worry about right now, i will sort it, i promise. I go to the doctor and ask him to tell me the situation. He doesn't speak English. The evil doctor is there, I have tried to ask her, but ask soon as I don't know the word for toe she just ignores me. Another female nurse is there and she laughs at my attempts to speak Spanish. I face the male doctor and say this, pointing at her, then i imitate a laugh, does not help, its not professional, in England or France, no nurse or doctor would laugh in this situation. They are quiet. I point to the toe and put my fingers into scissors, i say 'cut', he replies, 'Si, cut' and mirrors my scissors. Even though i knew it i feel sick. I know i can't go back and pretend its all fine, but i know she will break down if i tell her and it will be hours until anything is done about it. I ask him not to tell her yet, he nods and i rush back to her, hold her face, promise her they will do their best. She asks did you ask him? I say they don't know yet, i don't understand what they are saying, but we are going to get a bigger ambulance to a better hospital because there are specialists there who are more advanced. She is calmer and agrees its better to move onto this bigger hospital.

We lift her bed into the new ambulance and they let me ride in the back with her. Maria and her family are still waiting, they look so concerned, I love them so much at this point. They are carrying Frenchys bag. They say they will drive to the hospital in Tulcan. I explain its 40 minutes its too far. They insist, 'no problemo'. Maria gives me a hug and i jump in the ambulance. Frenchy is getting paler. I feel her face, but her temperature is ok. She says the pain is ok now and I pull down a neck brace that is hanging above and tie it round my neck, cross eyes and she laughs. I say I'm sorry, it's all my fault, I made her turn around, she says no, we are both stupid, i shouldn't have turned around, I'm so glad your here, I love you, I never want to be away from you. It's strange how much you depend on each other when its just the two of you. I was suddenly her motherly role, the one protecting her when she was most vulnerable, the one trying to make her laugh even though she was probably in the worst situation of her life. And no other person will ever be the people we were for each other today or 2 weeks ago in Cuzco, no one will replace us in the stories in the future of the days we got each other through awful situations. Because of these moments we know we will always be in each others lives, we have created bonds that far exceed friendship, family or travel buddies. This year and especially these two past hospital experiences have created a bond so unique its indescribable.

40 minutes later and we are in Tulcan. We lift her bed out and wheel her into the emergency room. There's people bleeding in the beds, babies screaming, a lady with a drip attached to her nose, a lady that looks like she's been in a fire. I'm feeling more and more light headed. They take her pretty quickly for an X ray. Its me and one nurse, I'm running ahead to open the door for her as she pushes the bed through. We go into the X Ray room and another nurse is there, we lift French into the X ray bed and turn her on her side. She takes the X ray in seconds, turns her another way and takes another. The nurse who was pushing her bed is asking me questions about where I'm from, my job, how we know each other. She's just interested and looking at me with a huge smile. The staff are making me feel relaxed. The two women go off to inspect the X ray. I tell French i'll be right back and I sneak to the other room, I knock on the door, 'pardon', may i look i ask. From afar I can already see the clear break in the little toe. Come in they say. I point to my toe, do the scissor and say, 'one or two or three?' Solo uno, she says. Only one. They will operate tomorrow. Tomorrow? Why tomorrow? Will it be ok that long? No problemo, they need to wait for a specialist to arrive. I tell them not to tell Frenchy, but she whispers they will eventually have to explain the procedure before the operation. I just want her to rest tonight. I'll tell her tomorrow. When I arrive back into the room French asks if i saw the X ray, I say i couldn't really see it and couldn't really understand what it meant. I am the worlds worst liar. She heard mañana and says the operation is tomorrow isn't it. I can hear the disappointment in her voice. I explain that the specialist comes tomorrow, but until then its fine as it is. We are talking about her foot and we are counting ourselves lucky, thinking of if we hit another car and killed another person or injured a little child running across the road. Or if the bike took off her leg or foot. I asked her what she'd rather lose, a foot or a hand and she said foot. Surely this is a good answer i think, holding on to any little sign that she will handle the news she has awaiting her. I ask her how she would feel if she lost part of her foot. She said she doesn't care, as long as she can walk. This makes me feel better. We move not to more positive chat.

We are waiting a while for them to finish looking at the X ray so I decide to go check if Maria and her family are waiting. We don't want them waiting around hours. I run back through all the doors and the long corridors and there they are, faces pressed against the entrance window. There's loads of people out there. They grab at me as I exit the door, hugging me, touching me, mothering me, asking how she is, whats happening. I explain tomorrow a specialist will come, I'm stuttering trying to find the right words in Spanish and I am definitely using the wrong ones, they struggle to keep up, but are trying hard. I explain that one toe must be cut. Maria tells me they are not letting people in the hospital, but for me to say I need her. She is really concerned about French and just wants to check up on her. I want to hug her tight. We go to the security guard at the door and she's telling him I need her to translate. He doesn't let her in. I ask if I can grab my bag, really I just want my camera battery because Frenchy wants me to take a picture of her current state. The late twenties lady takes me by the hand and leads me outside to the car. She's asking me do i want to stay at their house tonight, I'm so grateful to have these people in my life right now. Thank you so much, but i want to stay with Frenchy. Do you need clothes? Food? We have everything in these bags, but thank you. I grab my bag then pull out Frenchy's, she takes it off me to carry. I look at my other bag, guitar and longboard and they all seem so unimportant to me right now. She says leave them, we will drop them here tomorrow. I thank her over and over again. She says her house is not far, if we need anything. I feel like i have my family with me. We arrive back to Maria and the family and i tell them I have to go be with French, but please go home, its late, thank you, thank you, i kiss and hug them all and they squeeze me tight, telling me they will be back tomorrow. I run back to French and we wheel her back to the emergency room.

They unwrap her foot in front of everyone, no curtain is pulled. Straight away the doctor says yes this is bad. I don't think Frenchy hears. Every time they converse with each other I start to hum a tune, I'm hoping it stops Frenchy picking up on some of the Spanish words they are speaking. I don't want her to hear that it has to be cut. They inject her immediately with local anaesthetic. She screams and i hold her cheek and her neck and hold her leg from twitching as they inject. It will kick in in seconds, just wait, let them do it. 'I know, i know' she's saying, but the pain is too much. Then it kicks in and she calms. They hang her drip up and doctors surround her foot with a bright light. I keep looking to check up on what they are doing and I'm feeling like I can faint, the little toe is so far away from the rest. They start to touch her toe, asking if there is pain anywhere, I guess to see if there is any further fractures or breaks and to also make sure the anaesthetic is kicking in. They clean it some more and he shows me a stone that was inside, its about the size of a finger nail. He pulls out a smaller one after. He cleans all the dust out and says he's going to cut a bit of skin. Frenchy panics and ask what skin, but i explain just a little bit is hanging off. The doctor says he thinks she should go to a specialist in Quito now, rather than waiting til 9am for a specialist to come here. I'm starting to think its getting more serious. 'How far is Quito?' 5 hours he says. 'And how would we get there?' By ambulance. I can see in Frenchys face she's realising its not just a deep cut. 'I will call Quito and see if there is s specialist awaiting you, if not you will stay here'. We sit in silence. 'Its worse than i thought isn't it?' It's going to be ok, its just going to be a small part of your foot. As long as they don't make it look ugly, she jokes. Maybe just one toe, i try to test the water. One toe! she looks panicked and i say lets just see what they say ok.

He wraps the foot back up and leaves. We ask the nurse for the stones. She gets the doctor and he routes around in her blood on the aluminium wheeled shelf and hands it to me, the nurse puts a glove on my hands and he drops the stones into it. I show French and she looks impressed, says she's going to give one to her mum and one to my mum for Christmas. She's becoming more smiley. She says she's thirsty so i ask the doctor where i can buy water, he says down the road so i race off out the hospital doors, then the gate then down the dark road. Further down a security guard tells me no shops are open, you have to get a taxi to town, but you can get water in the hospital. I head back then ask the guard at the hospital gates, he says theres a shop open at the end of the road. I head back down the dark road and at the end is a little window with white painted metal bars on it and a little man inside. I get water, two unknown pastries and a chocolate bar and race back. I push through the crowds of people waiting outside the entrance, it breaks my heart that they can't be next to their loved ones, but makes me so grateful they are letting me in. I don't know if its because we are foreigners, because we both don't speak fluent Spanish, because the extent of Frenchys injury, but I'm so happy to be with her.

We share the chocolate bar, Frenchy says its good, which makes me happy and we nibble at the odd pastries and guzzle the water. I hold the bottle to Frenchys lips, pulling it away when she signals she's had enough. Soon after the same nurse that pushed her to X ray reappears and says 'vamos'. Where to? Another floor she says. I think its to go to a ward to sleep. I run ahead opening all the doors again and we squeeze in a lift, me carrying all our belongings on the good shoulder. We enter a nice room with four beds, there's a cute old lady occupying one. They wheel French next to her and next to the window, the far right corner. We change her into a new robe, carefully passing her drip through the arm, I hang it up on the metal hook. I tuck her in and help the nurse fill out some more forms about where she lives, her parents names and her occupation. It isn't long before Frenchy is asleep and here I am, in a small reclining chair next to her hospital bed sitting in the dark, thinking how the fuck I am going to tell her in the morning that she will lose part of her foot, that they will have to cut off her little toe and skin graph the rest. I feel sick just thinking about how sad this will make her. My mum will kill me for not looking after her and her parents will probably do the same. The old woman next to her has been moaning with pain for hours. I helped her to the toilet then went to get a nurse for her pain. Frenchy just woke up for the toilet too so i unhooked her drip, pulled back her covers and put her arm around me as she hopped to the toilet. Frenchy has been asleep since 11pm. Its now 4.30am.

I'm going to go to the doctor either now or in the morning and ask her to explain exactly what will happen tomorrow so I can be the one to explain it to French rather than some stranger doctor talking in unknown doctor lingo. This has to be the end for Crunchy we decided, we have to find someone to buy him when we're out of here in 3 days. The doctor asked if i had somewhere to stay and i begged to sleep here, I said i'd sleep on the floor, that i have a sleeping bag and they agreed. I just hope they continue to let me the rest of the nights, i don't wasn't Frenchy to be alone.

0 notes

thefinalride-blog · 11 years

Text

19 Toes: Frenchys Rendition.

10/11/13.

Our alarms go off at 7am, again Crutches pushes me out of bed. We have a long day ahead. An amazing day, the road is so enjoyable, we're driving through little villages in the jungle. Villagers are carrying machetes and guns. People are now black, it feels like we're in Jamaica. We stop halfway through our journey, after San Lorenzo (the northern one), in a little street restaurant held by a black family. Initially we were only stopping for a coca cola, but the smell of the barbecue chicken is too tempting and we end up having lunch.

We get back on the road, full of energy, ready for the 4 hours ride that's waiting for us. The sun has gone and we can feel the rain, but it doesn't last for long. We get stopped at a few road blocks by the army. Crutches goes for a longboard ride and pouf! Head straight into the floor. I saw her from far, I know she landed on her head to avoid to dislocate her shoulder again. Poor pupuce, I see her standing up straight away. I start the motorbike and rush to her. She's got a big lump on the side of her eye and on her chin. Both of her knees are bleeding. She's shaking and swearing 'fuck, fuck, fuck'. She's so bored and sick of injuring herself. I think 'it's true it's always to her that the problems happen, never to me, not fair'. Her sunglasses are broken and I had just made a macrome holder for them. We get back on the bike, the scenery is so beautiful that we stop for few pictures. Further up the mountain and the army is making us write down our details and the bikes details. We pass a few mountains, the sun is coming out again, we're 90 kilometres from Tulcan, our destination for the night. Colombia is near!

Then it happened. Crutches shows me her swollen eye. I turn around quickly, look back on the road again and I can see the bike deviating on the side. We get out of the road and Crunchy goes straight into the ditch. Fuck. It stops. We're both in shock. 'Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?' we keep repeating to each other. I can see Crutches eyes going big. I say yes, yes. We're away from the motorbike. Suddenly I feel this intense feeling in my body, in my leg. I look down. There's a massive hole in my shoe. I can see blood coming out. I panick. 'No, I'm not okay'. Crutches looks down and tells me 'it's ok, it's ok, don't move'. She's got this talent of reinsuring me even if there's something wrong, just like with the leeches in Nepal. She stands up straight away and runs to the middle of the road. She starts waving at cars.

The whole next 4 hours is really blurry for me but I'll try to recompose it. It feels like 3 seconds that Crutches has stood up and already I'm surrounded by so many people. An Indian man with long hair and I think he had a feather in his hair, says he's going to take my shoe off. I'm panicking, all the people around me seem really concerned. He takes it off and straight away Crutches goes 'don't look Frenchy, please don't look' and until now (it's the 12th today, 3 days after the accident) I still haven't looked at it. So I put my hand on my eyes. Someone carries me to the car of the family. I think it was Crutches and 2 men. I sit in the car, still not looking at my foot. I think it's bleeding because I can see blood on the floor later. A woman comes through the window, she gives me painkillers. We're waiting for the ambulance, but I don't really know what's happening. A man comes and speaks French to me. I can see Crutches running around trying to sort out what we're gonna do with Crunchy and the bags.

Suddenly I see everyone grouping in front of the car. People are panicking, they have two cases going on here. Crutches tells me there's a man having an epileptic fit. Someone seems to know what to do, the man is ok. Crutches says she can drive the motorbike where I'm going. I really don't want her to. I want her to stay with me, my eyes are literally looking around for her every minute. Her and the indian man are trying to start Crunchy. It doesn't work. I think it fucked. The people try to stop a truck to put Crunchy on, the first truck stops and agrees straight away. He comes out of his car with a rope to tie Crunchy, then all the men plus Crutches lift the bike up to the truck. It's done in 2 minutes.

A little man comes up to me and hands me in a piece of the exhaust and a piece of the reflective traffic post. I'm confused. Does it look like it's a part of Crunchy? At the back of the car I'm sitting in, there's a young girl. She's around 24 years old and is talking to me, next to her is her little brother. I'm so out of it, I answer questions automatically, still looking around for Crutches. I start shaking, from the shock I guess because I'm not that cold. After a while the family decides to drive to the hospital. They don't really seem to trust the ambulance will come quickly. So the father starts the car and drives off. Crutches is there with me. The bags are somewhere around too.

Suddenly we hear the ambulance, it's behind. There's a construction site on the road, so loads of traffic. Even though the father would drive faster, cars will get out of the way faster for the ambulance. We stop. The dad picks me up, I put my arms around his neck, I feel like he's my real father. He is carrying me like I'm his own. With some help I get out into the ambulance. Crutches has to go in the front, I'm staying with a doctor at the back. She wraps up my foot. I want to cry so much, but no tears are coming out. I keep saying fuck. I m so angry at myself. I hate Crunchy, I hate us being so irresponsible, I hate how it could have gone even worse than it has gone. We could have died, we could have killed someone, and all that with no formal papers. We could have gone to jail. All those thoughts keep running through my head. The doctor has finished taking care of my foot. She comes up to me and starts asking me questions. I guess the usual emergency questions trying to comfort me. 'Whats your name?, ok I'm blah blah how old are you? Where are you from? Etc. Ok marie, we're driving you to the hospital and from there you will get another ambulance for another hospital.' Time is getting long and the pain starts to kick in. I ask how long more, she says 8 minutes. I can see through the window that there is traffic, cars don't seem too bothered about ambulances here.

Finally we get to the hospital. They transfer me on another board, in an awkward way I couldn't explain. Crutches is here again, she smiles at me. I'm reinsured. I end on a bed, a sharp pain goes through my foot, like a knife just went through it. They are cleaning it. Crutches is not allowed in, but I can see her behind the curtain. Maria, the mother of the family that drove us here, suddenly appears. She's standing next to me, holding my hand, I wonder how she got here. She's making me reinsured and looked after. Until I ask 'es feo?' It's ugly? To what she replies yes it's 'grave'. Yes it's serious. Bless her, I know she just just wants to help. What she just says weirdly doesn't panic me. I get told I'm going to get put into another ambulance to go to the hospital in Tulcan.

I get transferred from one bed to another and this time it's just me and Crutches at the back of the ambulance. We realise how stupid and unreasonable we were, we go through all the other things that could have happened to us. I tell Crutches that I can't ever imagine being apart from her for the the rest of my life and how much I love her, I feel like I'm on my death bed. Crutches is trying to make me laugh by trying on the neck brace thats hanging from the ambulance ceiling. It makes her look ridiculous. It takes quite a long time to arrive in Tulcan. The whole passing on from beds to beds is happening again. I see the roof of the corridors as we go through to the emergency hall. We arrive in the observation room and there are loads of patients here. Two young women are lying on beds, under blankets, they've probably been checked and are waiting for operations. There are two babies, one is a new born, he keeps crying, his mum doesn't know what to do. It's heart breaking. The other baby is a bit older. A doctor comes and tells me that they're gonna clean my foot because there are little stones in it. But first they are going to inject anaesthetic into my foot. It relieves me. There are six doctors surrounding my foot. I can't feel it anymore. Crutches is next to me. I'm calm. They finish. A cleaner comes to clean up all the blood. Crutches stops her, we want to keep the stones as Christmas presents, one for Paula (Crutches mum), one for my mum.

Next step is the X-ray. I get taken to the room. Once the X-ray is done Crutches goes and talks to the doctor. I'm quite confident. Crutches keeps telling me that it's a good hospital, it's clean, it's big, it's new. We come back to the observation room. Then a bit later to a proper room. An old woman is there already, she's asleep, but wakes up and welcomes us with a smile. My foot is still sleeping. I get put into bed, they put me on a drip and I fall asleep straight away. Crutches is sitting with her laptop next to me. I have the best sleep. I wake up few times over night, the nurses changing my drip or injecting me with antibiotics. Crutches is still writing. She takes me to the toilets, I fall back asleep straight away.

6am, lights go on, 'Buenos Dias! Buenos Dias!'. It's the cleaners, why so early in the morning? Crutches has only gone to bed. By bed I mean this little chair that she made a bed of, with her blanket and my sleeping bag. I feel like 5 different doctors come in and ask me all about my accident, write it down and leave.

The whole time since this accident I've been saying it's all fine, I've got a good insurance, when suddenly it occurs to me that I started travelling on the 7th of November and it's now the 10th and haven't renewed it. What an idiot. 'Haven't you learnt with what happened to me?' Crutches says. I immediately email my insurance asking to renew the contract. Then I start looking through insurance papers. How much is this all gonna cost?

Then god must have been coming to my rescue and I find a paper stating that my insurance runs until the 25th of December. Ouf! I'm so relieved.

A woman comes in, she's wearing a doctor blouse. She starts asking us questions, she sounds more like a policeman, which makes sense because she soon tells us that she's from the social services and in charge of investigating our case. That panics us, although we've been agreeing on all the answers that we will probably have to give. The questions are easy, but then comes the question: 'tienes SOAT?' That's the question we've been dreading. SOAT is the national insurance that people who drive in Ecuador and Peru must have. We don't have it. We give our agreed answer: 'Tenemos international insurance, es en la Bolsa con la familia que nos ayuda.' We ve got international insurance, it's in the bag with the family who helped us. The scary woman is actually quite funny. There's a fly in the room, she's ordering it to leave. 'Se fuera! Se fuera! ' She seems concerns that the fly doesn't obey to her.

Nurses come in the room, it's time for my operation. I get put into a green dressing gown. I really need to pee so Crutches takes me one last time, then I lay down on the bed they brought up and roll on to the theatre. Crutches is helping the nurse with the bed. They stop in a corridor to inject my bum. I'm hoping it's the anaesthetic, but it's not. We carry on our journey through the corridor, all I can see is the roof. Further up comes the door that Crutches isn't allowed to cross, I say bye pupuce. She takes a last picture of me then I disappear.

I arrive in the theatre, I'm scared. I just want to fall asleep and wake up after the operation. I can see all the tools they're gonna use: scissors, string, metal utensils, etc. I'm trying not to look. They transfer me on the operation bed and tell me they're going to do me an epidural. I heard it hurts. They ask me to curl up in a foetus position. I'm scared. They wipe my back with freezing water then I feel it, the big needle. I can feel this liquid running through my back then suddenly a sharp electric shock runs through my foot. I move and scream, they tell me not to move. I start crying, like a baby in my foetus position. I ask 'am I going to go to sleep?' One doctor replies no, 'unless you want to?' I already had the epidural so I just don't say anything, They put a curtain in front of my face to hide the show: them operating my foot. The face of the doctor I met earlier pops up 'hello my beautiful lady!'. He makes me smile. My legs start boiling, I don't know if I can feel them. I'm paranoid about the pain. I ask if that's it? A doctor says 'can you feel anything?' I say no. 'They're working'. All I can feel is my body going up and down, like they're pushing it from the bottom of my feet to make sure the epidural is still active. It's a weird feeling. I can't feel anything until just under my boobs.

The doctors head pops up from behind the curtain again. 'I can't save your toe, you know that?' I say yes with a little sad face. He carries on the work. My upper body starts shaking, my hands are getting cold, I'm freezing. I can't stop shaking. The doctors realise and bring a hot water bottle to put on my chest. I want to ask them to put it on my hand, but I wouldn't know which one is the coldest. After a while I ask them to take the thing off my chest, it's burning me and hasn't stopped my body from shaking. They finally put in on my hand. The doctor says it's done. His gloves are covered in blood. Still they keep me on the bed for another 20 minutes, I think they're on the stitching part.

Finally I get taken out of the theatre, I'm cold as an ice cube. I'm in the recovery room, they leave me there for 3 hours. I'm next to Maria, the old woman from my room who is coming out of her operation too. A doctor brings me a blanket and I fall asleep for a bit. I wake up. I try to touch my legs, my stomach, my mini. It's such a strange feeling. I can't feel anything. I try to pinch my thigh. Nothing. My stomach is so itchy. I am starting to feel sick. I want to vomit. I tell the nurse 'no me siente bueno', I don't feel good. She brings me a little blue box, straight away I vomit in it. I hate vomiting. I fall asleep again. Every now and then the nurse asks me if I can feel my legs. I realise that they will let me out when the epidural hasn't worn off. So I start trying to lift my legs so much.. It takes me 2 hours to be able to move my knee 10 cm. After a while the nurse comes to me, 'can you move your legs?' I say yes. 'Show me' she says. So with all the effort in the world I lift one knee up, and the second one, it's so hard, but I really want to come back to Crutches. Then she asks if I can lift my bum. I haven't tried this one yet but I give it a go. I manage to lift it up a little bit. She says good. I can get out. It takes them one hour still to get me out. I can't stay in place. I keep moving to let them know that I can't wait to get out. They fill in millions of papers, talk to each other and finally my bed arrives. They transfer me on it and we go.

The doctor whose pushing my bed asks what's my friend's name. I say Chloe. We go through a door and he calls 'Chloe, Chloe'. All I can see is 3 woman and a man across the corridor. I want to tell him that that's not Chloe. But then I turn my head around and see Crutches asleep on the chairs. Crutches! She wakes up, gives me a kiss and we head to the room. Although Crutches says I shouldn't ring my parents, not to worry them, I really want to. I know they won't panic. So I ring them and straight away I burst into tears, I can't speak. That's not how I imagined the phone call. My mum panics and asks me to put my video on. I get back into control and tell her that everything is fine. We fell off the bike and they had to take my toe away. I hang up. Crutches goes for dinner with Nelson, Maria's son. I go to sleep. Crutches has to sleep on the floor that night, the nurses are being funny about us 2 being in the same bed, apparently the bed can't handle the weight. I feel so sorry for Crutches, all night as well the nurse comes and checks my drip and kicks Crutches on the way. What would I do without you Crutches?

0 notes