Saturday, March 28, 2009

No, I'm not there anymore :(



So my Peace Corps service has come to a halt due to an unfortunate accident where I shattered my heel. My doctor said I had to have surgery to recover and sent me to Washington to have that surgery.

WARNING: ugly photo of my foot later!!

How it happened:
I was walking back from a meeting at the hospital (how ironic) and I was only about a half a block away from the hospital when I decided to stop at my friends house to get the English books I had lent her. At this point it was around 9pm, and completely dark. I crossed over this gutter (without realizing) to enter her house and I sat in some pretty bright lights for about 15 minutes and when I came out, I could see even less (haha) and I decided to walk across this path in front of her house (as seen in the photo) and tried to cross to the street, where the path ends (a little after the tree) and I could see the grass under the tree and there was only a small area that I couldn't see, but I just assumed it was also grass and I literally just stepped off the side of the gutter and landed at the bottom (about 4 and a half feet down) and landed right on my feet..but I landed really hard on my left foot and that's what caused the injury :(
After I fell, two neighbors helped pull me out and they drove me (half a block) BACK to the hospital and everyone, all the doctors and the mayor were still in the meeting and saw me all crying haha...I was saying that my ankle hurt (bc I thought it did) so they took an xray of my ankle and said it wasn't broken, and it wasn't until 5 days later that I got other xrays of my foot and we realized that it was actually my heel that was broken.






This is the first cast I had, which is partial soft cast.




I had one mad cankle due to the swelling from the plane ride!






This was my preparation for surgery. I had a pump on my foot to make the swelling go down and these funny socks to avoid blood clots.


Dad setting a good example for the other patients


In the waiting room before surgery the doctor gave me three choice for surgical hats so we had to model them a bit to make the right decision (I decided on the classic shower cap look)

Everyone had to try them on.

My awesome friends and family sent and brought me lots of flowers and cookies and movies and balloons!




Looks like I'll be here for about 4-6 months, so I'm brainstorming what I can do to take advantage of my time here and here are some ideas I came up with:


-Study more Guarani


-Begin to Work on my Thesis/Major Paper


-Practice Guitar


-Read lots of books


-Organize projects that I can implement when I return to Paraguay


-Get to know organizations (NGOs) that I want to support and follow and possibly decide which organizations I might be interested in for after Peace Corps employment




That's all for now!


CALL me if you are in NOVA :D


1 comment:

Tristan said...

Learn "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding on guitar! The chords are pretty simple and there are lessons for it on youtube. You can play guitar and I'll sing and do the whistling, unless you want to do the whistling (whistling duet, maybe?). :D