Boilin'

To all of the family and friends who were concerned about the work load I have here, who, when they expressed this concern, were assured by me that things would slow down: that was a bold-faced lie. I knew things wouldn't slow down, but I lied to comfort you. Life has decided to punish me for my lie with the harsh reality that things have actually sped up -- exponentially, in fact (we're working on properties of exponents in senior math this week). Times flies by so fast for me that by the time Friday arrives, I'm caught completely off-guard. We're two days away from the mark of having been here for two months already, and our first-quarter exams are rapidly approaching. Whoever said time moves more slowly in non-Western countries was certainly not an American volunteer who is expected to do more, do more, do more, not only by our employers but by ourselves, as products of our American culture.

That said - I absolutely love everything I'm doing. The subjects I teach are coming alive for me more and more every day, creating an inverse relationship with how much my students care about them (we worked on inverse relationships in junior math last week). The more excited I get about what I'm teaching, the more blank stares I get. Some of my students just absolutely refuse to humor me. One student falls asleep in class almost every day; as the teacher, you would think I would be angry, but it's actually one of the funniest things I've ever seen. She tries so hard to keep her head up, but her neck turns into Jell-O; her face becomes long and drawn, like her cheeks and jaw are weighted down by bags of sand; the space where her eyes used to be turn into thin black slits of closed eyelids; and one day, her mouth was even hanging wide open. I've thought quite seriously about seeing if I could throw my chalk in there.

But not me - my excitement for teaching skyrocketed about two weeks ago. If I had to graph my excitement on a coordinate plane, I would say the linear equation that represents my excitement is a strong positive, close to y = 50x (we're working on linear equations in sophomore math this week). I would even venture to say that I have come to love math.

I take that back -- I like math. We're friends. I do love world history! I'm enthralled by history and wish I would have given it more of a chance in high school. Budgeting has a special place in my heart due to the hours I spent last week typing, copying, cutting, and stapling together pages of seven checkbooks and check registers and dozens of deposit slips that I made for my seven junior girls. No resources? No problem! I gave our copy machine a run for its money and made everything from scratch. I typed up a bunch of tests for this past week, did all of my lesson planning for the next two weeks, graded everything I could, and had short tutoring sessions with some struggling students. By the end of last week, I was high on the adrenaline of a feeling that sounded something like, "I just got a ton of stuff done! I rock!"

My immeasurable energy turned out to be an even greater blessing than I realized once this week began. By Tuesday, I realized that the mosquito bite on the back of my right ankle, though I had been doing my best not to scratch it, was rapidly on its way to becoming my first boil. I wasn't that worried, though -- Luke had some boils when Philip and I first arrived, and Philip had had a couple already, so they couldn't be that unbearable. Wednesday morning when I woke up, I was singing a different song. It was a song of tears, pain, and a repeating chorus that was sung all in one sharp breath -- "ohmygodthathurtssobad" -- with every step I took. My ankle had swollen to the size of a grapefruit, and the boil showed no sign of opening to let out the infection anytime soon. I went to my first two classes and was in so much pain, I decided to go to the doctor. Immanuel, who does the grounds/maintenance for Our Lady of Mercy, had noticed the pain I was in and gave me a ride there.

The doctor inspected my ankle, didn't seem too concerned, and noted that the back of the ankle is one of the worst places to get an infection on island, because of all the dirt our zorries kick up on the back of our legs. Additionally, it is right in the middle of an existing scar from this summer -- the scar from the hot exhaust pipe of Chuck's motorcycle, which might have been ugly but at least led into a cool story -- and scar tissue, she explained, holds infections in and thus it is more difficult to treat them. She casually gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and the advice of elevation and warm compresses, and sent me on my way. I took a cab back to school ($1 per ride anywhere on the island - not bad compared to the $30 I paid to get to downtown Cleveland one time) and finished out my classes. To my surprise, a fever swept over me very suddenly, and I was feeling very lightheaded by my post-lunch math class. I had to stop teaching and told the girls just to work on their homework. Just then, Immanuel appeared in the doorway of my classroom like some kind of superhero, and motioned for me to come with him -- he would take me home. I was relieved, grabbed my things, and got in his car. On the way home, he lectured me. "I told you not to go to the doctor," he said. It's true, he did say that. "Now you have a fever." I hope I don't pass out in his car. "You should have told me about this infection yesterday. Didn't you see how I gave Luke local medicine for his boil and it healed?" he asked. Yes, I guess I did witness that. "I'll give you medicine, too." Okay. He also told me about how his grandfather taught him local medicine, and he has never been to the doctor.

When we got to our house, he came inside with me and I perched on the edge of our couch with my leg on the coffee table. "We have to open up the infection to let it come out," he said. I braced myself -- that sounded painful, like it involved needles, or potentially a machete. But then I felt the gentle rubbing of what smelled like pure coconut oil on the boil, and he placed a small leaf that smelled a bit like mint on top. "There," he said, and laughed a hearty laugh when he saw me wincing in pain. "See you tomorrow!" he said cheerfully, and my rode off on his white horse, which, on any other day, may look peculiarly a bit like a dark grey sedan.

Confused and still a little feverish, I got up and went to my bed. I fell into a deep sleep, and woke up covered in sweat at 6:30 when Luke came into my room asking if I wanted some soup. I said no, but I must have said it with an air of delirium, because he demanded that I take my temperature. It was normal -- the fever had finally broken -- but all I could think about was the dream I had just had, about my leg being amputated. I went back to sleep, hoping the dream wouldn't continue.

Thursday morning, I woke up, still swollen and in a lot of pain when I tried to walk, but -- alas! -- that tiny leaf and coconut oil had caused the skin to break, and when I removed the leaf, whitish-yellow pus mixed with blood started to slowly leak out. Everyone assured me that was a good thing -- the pressure would be relieved and the pain would lessen. I went to school and mostly sat through my classes, having my students take turns writing on the board. They complied -- most of them showed great concern for me, which I thought was really nice, and tells me I must be doing something right as a teacher. Walking continued to give me great pain, but when I sat with my foot elevated, the pain lessened. I thought I could get by all day on that reality, but after my last class, the pain brought on by each step made my breath inhale so sharply, I thought I might pass out. I had no other choice but to go home and lay down. This time, Immanuel gave me the same local medicine he had given Luke a few weeks ago, which is, quite literally, a mixture of rotten bananas and coconut oil. "It's good," he said. "By Monday, the infection will be all gone." So I went home, wrapped the wet black clump in an old t-shirt around my leg, realized how much it was going to leak through, wrapped my foot and ankle in a plastic bag, realized there was a hole in that plastic bag, and then wrapped it in another plastic bag. As strange as it sounds, it felt immediately a bit better. Immanuel had explained that when the skin and underlying infection become hardened and won't let any fluid out, it becomes painful, so I needed to keep it soft. It made sense.

I got through Thursday night with flying colors, each step bringing pain but not debilitating pain like earlier that day. I slept with this concoction wrapped around my leg, and woke Friday (yesterday) morning and removed it, only to be met with the worst smell I have ever laid nose upon (I made up that phrase right now, but I think it works) coming directly from my right ankle/foot region. It looked about as terrible as it smelled -- my foot was covered in runny brown liquid and stains, and skin surrounding the boil looked like a rotting prune -- light and dark purple and wrinkled. Soon after I removed it and washed up, more blood and infection started coming out. I wrapped it loosely, but blood and fluid seeped right through anything I wrapped it in. Immanuel saw it and said, "this is good," but my students were somewhat concerned and mostly disgusted. "Teacher.. some of your blood is on the floor right there." "Teacher.. could you cover that?" A couple of my freshmen, however, who were taking a test but not so quietly, weren't feeling so concerned and were instead taking advantage of the fact that I had to sit with my leg propped up while they took their tests. I lost my patience at one point, stuck my leg up in the air, and practically yelled, "Does everyone see the blood gushing out of my leg this morning? There is blood GUSHING out of my LEG! For this reason, I have to sit and cannot walk around in between your desks and make sure you are not talking! But what I can still do is write a biiiiig ZERO on top of your paper if I see you talking before the bell rings. Okay?!" There was no more talking after that. I think they might have been scared I was going to wipe my blood on them.

The swelling was so bad by early afternoon that I decided to pay another visit to the doctor. She removed the wrapping, saw the dead, black tissue and fluids spurting out, and nodded in a way that said, this looks good. "What we need to do now," she said, "is get that infection out of there." I laid back and put my foot up. That's essentially what the local medicines had been doing -- sucking out the infection. I figured she would give me some sort of special bandage, like one that my aunt gave me when I was twelve and wiped out on my bike. I remember we just placed it over my ripped-up knee, and overnight, it had sucked all of the gravel bits out of my leg. It sounded good to me! What didn't sound so good was the sound of metal surgical tools clinking together as she searched for what emerged looking like a pair of tiny salad tongs; the sound of her flicking a needle; and the sound of her asking if I had ever had a bad reaction to Novocaine. "No," I said, uneasily. I tried to ask questions about what she was about to do, but then all of a sudden, the needle was in my ankle. I inhaled sharply and grabbed the sides of the chair. "The Novocaine isn't as painful as the medicine will be," I heard her say. What medicine? I felt lightheaded, but then the sharp pain of the needle was gone. I looked down towards my ankle just in time to see her inserting another, larger needle directly into the middle of the boil, the pain accompanying it that much sharper. Oh, that medicine. I inhaled again, more sharply, and suddenly everything was black.

I woke up a few seconds later to her standing over me. "You can't hold your breath like that, or you'll pass out," she advised, a few moments too late, if you ask me. In retrospect, I think the compassion was lost in lingual and cultural translation, but in the moment, I wasn't sure how to feel. I still felt woozy when she asked, "can you feel this?" Feel what? I looked down and realized her finger was on top of my boil. Confused, I told her I felt nothing, and she nodded and picked up the salad tongs that belonged to an elf family. I considered getting up and running away, but realized my lower leg was numb and I wouldn't get too far. I watched as she inserted the tongs into the middle of my boil and began pulling out clumps of dead, black tissue and the whitish-yellow infection. Still lightheaded, I began to feel sick, but I couldn't look away. When she finished, it looked like a bullet wound. The hole was at least big enough to fit a kernel of corn comfortably. She wrapped my leg with gauze and patted my other leg distantly. "You're good to go!" She told me she would put me on a stronger antibiotic in addition to the one I was already on, and told me to wait in the waiting room for the prescription. I felt dazed and did as she said, and called a cab to go back to school.

I'm still feeling a little nauseous and lightheaded when I look down at my leg and see the hole, but the good news is that last night and continuing into today, the pain completely ceased. It was mostly gone earlier yesterday, but now it's really gone -- the only thing that still remains is the swelling, which I assume will continue to go down as fluid continues to leak out of my leg, which it has been all day. So it's mostly over, this boil situation. I think the local medicine was a good idea, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm a believer. We discussed this a lot at JVI orientation -- the idea of local v. Western medicine -- and I didn't process it too much, naively believing I wouldn't need to worry about it. But here I am, two months in, with my first major infection. This boil is definitely in the running for some of the worst pain I have had in a while -- maybe not the boil itself as much as the swelling that was causing sharp shooting pains up my leg and into my spine.

If nothing else, anyone who knows me knows that I love scars and the stories behind them. So, cool story, right? A little long. I'll have to work on shortening it. At the very least, it has me singing, "Oh come, oh come, Immanuel.. heal this infection on my right ankle (emphasis on the -kle)." ...too much?