The weekend started off innocuously enough. We participated in our schools annual sports day festivities on Friday, which really meant that I spent the day sitting around watching students compete in cheer-leading competitions (sports day, c'mon!) while I simultaneously got sunburned and rained on. At the end of the day, and much to Maya's dismay, I got to climb around on some scaffolding in the effort to clean up after the days festivities.
Four o'clock rolled around and we hopped on the scooter and made our way back home. By five p.m. we were home and both in various stages of napping when we got a call from one of our good friends here. Emily, our good friend here, let us know that this would be her final weekend in Bangkok. She has decided to move on, or move back, to the more financially lucrative, albeit much colder in the winter, pastures of S. Korea. We thought about declining the invitation but soon found out that some of our other friends, also friends of Emily's, had already canceled on the evening and we, being the bleeding hearts that we are, could not stand the thought of Emily spending one of her last weekends here without the pleasure of some company, even if it was ours.
So we roused ourselves from our siestas, got cleaned up, and headed out for a few drinks at the Tube. It was a quiet enough evening, we were only out for about three hours. We got a surprisingly easy taxi back home (no fussing, or arguing, or asking multiple drivers for the lift), and were in bed by about two a.m.. By any account, not bad for a Friday night.
Saturday rolled around. Maya spent a majority of the day filling out security applications for a potential job at the IRC (International Refugee Committee). I spent most of the day sleeping. Around five o'clock, I went for a run and then Maya and I prepared to go out again in order to celebrate a couple of birthdays. The first celebrant was a co-worker of ours and we helped her issue in her 24th year with some delicious Indian food, towers of beer, and buckets of vodka screwdrivers. We also used the opportunity to introduce Marcus and Pascale to a few of our co-workers.
The dinner went well and at about 9:30 we headed to one of our favorite bars in the area, Rain Dogs, in order to help celebrate the birthday of one of Marcus' fellow CELTA students. B.J. (I know, it's hard for me not to chuckle as well) also happened to be turning 24 (these young kids are really making me aware of my receding hairline). We had a few beers and, as the evening progressed, Emily showed up and informed us that our friends, the Brits, who had canceled the night before would be making an appearance as well.
The Brits (aka Simon and Matthew, pronounced Maffew) got a bit lost so, at around 11:30, I went out to find them and guide them in. I located them after about 10 minutes and got my first clue that the evening was about to get more interesting. On sight, Simon came barreling down the street and tackled me. Now, Simon has had a general feeling of hostility towards me ever since the night that I punched him in the stomach, and, as we both went careening to the pavement in front of an on-coming taxi I thought to myself, "I probably deserve this and, hopefully, now we're even."
Well, the taxi didn't hit us and neither of us got hurt, though we both ended up a little bit soggier than we began. We made our way back to the bar and Maffew proceeded to order a bottle of whiskey to keep the festivities going.
The great thing about Rain Dogs is that the clientele is in charge of the music. They have a computer set up that we can access and plug in our mp3 players, ipods, mini-discs, and what have you. They also have an extremely large selection of music of their own. This is really a great thing, but you might question the wisdom in letting random drunk people have access to a machine that costs a significant amount of money. We, however, were in no state to question wisdom.
Since we were the only customers in the bar, the music was ours. We were drinking and talking and having a generally good, relaxing evening. Towards about two o'clock Maya started getting a little sleepy and decided to head home. I, being the phenomenal boyfriend that I am, prepared myself to walk her out to a taxi. She said her good-byes and I said my see-you-in-a-fews and we prepared to walk out of the soi to hail a taxi. Just as we were walking out, the Brits started pumping out a little Modest Mouse, which caught both of our attention. We both headed back in to have an end of the evening dance-around.
This is when the evening turned. Something happened. I don't know what. It was dark. There was movement, then even more movement, then a loud crashing sound and no music. The Brits had started wrestling, or having sex, or maybe just gotten excited about something one of them said about a soccer game, and the next moment there was no music and a computer on the ground.
Somewhere in the midst of coming back in to dance and the crashing of the computer I had decided to take my sandals off so that nothing would inhibit the amazing dance moves I was pulling off. Did I mention it was dark?
There is nothing like a thousand dollar machine hitting hard concrete to get the attention of, well, everybody. My instinct was to move towards the way-laid monitor to make sure that it was still intact.
This was a bad instinct.
It seems that not only was there a computer on the table but there was also a whiskey glass, which became an invisible two centimeter high, 10 centimeter long tendon slicing ninja.
I stepped towards the computer, forgetting that I wasn't wearing my sandals. I only stepped once. I stopped. I thought, "Maybe this ain't so good." I limped towards a chair. I bled all over everything. I sat down. I continued to bleed. And bleed. And bleed.
This is about when everybody else stopped worrying about the computer and started noticing all of the puddles of blood on the floor. Then they noticed me, in a chair, looking at my foot with, I am sure, a confused expression. I always seem to get confused when I hurt myself.
Then began the hospital debate among inebriated people as we tried to clean the wound and assess the damage. "How bad could it be?" "He'll be all right, get him another drink?" "Maybe he should go to the hospital." "I don't want to go to the hospital, get me another drink!" "It looks worse than it is." and then Maya, "We're going to the hospital." Luckily for me, Maya hadn't really been drinking and was still well within normal visual capacities. In the commotion and debate the staff at the bar had also already decided that I was going to the hospital. By the time I knew I was leaving there was a taxi waiting.
We put my foot in a plastic bag so that I wouldn't bleed all over the taxi. The hospital was maybe a ten minute ride away from the bar. We got there and I limped into the hospital room and removed the bag that contained a considerable amount of my blood (whiskey doesn't seem to lead to conducive blood clotting coefficients). We removed my sandal, which was glued to my foot by the blood that was congealing around my heal. The nurses began to clean the wound and, before long, the doctor was there to begin stitching.
I was in a surprisingly good mood. I spent my time joking around with Maya and reassuring the doctor that there was nothing to worry about and that everything was going to fine. He informed Maya that I had sliced one of the tendons in my foot. I asked how long it would be before I could run and if I would be able to do the vertical marathon I was planning on participating in next weekend. He laughed a bit, told me it would be six weeks before I could run and then told me that there was no way I was walking up 62 flights of stairs. This information put a bit of a damper on my mood, but I was at least thankful that I had followed through on my run earlier in the evening, since it now seemed like it would be my last for a while.
In the end, I ended up with twenty-three stitches in my foot. Five of them are internal and, I imagine, are holding my tendon together, the other eighteen are external, 16 in my middle toes and two on my big toe (I am not sure if those two are completely necessary, I think the doctor was just having fun being with me). My foot now looks like this (when it isn't covered in bandages):
However good my mood was on Saturday night/Sunday morning, by the time I woke up on Sunday mid-morning I was intensely aware of the fact that a man had been sticking his finger into my foot and pulling on a tendon.
The past two days have been a bit uncomfortable and I stayed home from work today. After about two hours of consciousness I inevitably feel the need to sleep again and all the doctor seemed to think I deserved for the pain is paracetamol (he is probably right). For my American friends, that is Tylenol, and not even that good Canadian Tylenol. I did manage to clean our apartment today, and Simon did call to let me know that we are, in fact, now even.
Maya:
While Brett had nothing to do all day but sit around, my situation, as a K1 teacher was quite the opposite. However, instead of having kids concentrated in one area, they were spread out over an entire field, uncertain as to why all these people suddenly wanted them to run or take all the red balls out of the basket or sit down when the whistle blew. Many, once they got the hang of the game had fun. Others were terrified and wanted nothing to do with it. There were parents to talk to and kids without parents to keep entertained so that they wouldn't think about their parents not being there. There was my Thai teaching assistant who had a tendency of lining them up and leading them somewhere without telling me where there were going. It was a special kind of exhaustion. I did, however, win a gold medal for the teacher's vs parents chairball game. That's right, chairball. How can I explain this game? It's like ultimate frisbee meets basketball meets chair meets trashcan. No dribbling. Once someone has possession of the ball, passing it to a teammate is your only option. At the end of the field is a chair. On this chair is someone holding a trashcan. The goal is to get the ball into your own trashcan. I was the defender. I almost knocked some poor mother off the chair. In my defense, I did grab hold of her and made sure she didn't fall once I was sure the ball was no where near the trashcan. We schooled the parents, 10-2. Teachers got the gold medal. I was exhausted once we got home, but ended up having a lovely evening at The Tube. A headache started to set in before I went to bed. Fearing dehydration, I drank lots of water. It didn't work.
The next morning, I woke up with a headache. Not just any headache. An anger headache. I can't remember the last time I had an anger headache. It grew as filling out forms that should have taken 30 minutes took me 3 hours due to formatting and scanning issues. It grew as the house took on a funny odor that was unbearable. It grew as the announcer for "whacked-out sports" on AXN barked away on the TV. I demanded the announcer's demise, ceremoniously turned off the TV and then noticed Brett conveniently and wisely making his way out for a run. After making efforts to halt the odor, my anger headache turned into a sad headache. It was miraculously cured with fresh air, a beautiful balcony, delicious Indian food, and good company.
We moved on to my favorite bar in Bangkok, Rain Dogs. The night got better as Emily and Nick miraculously appeared without any efforts of coordination (on my part as I had forgotten my phone at home). The Brits showed up as well (with a bit more effort involved). Whiskey was had. I, fearing the return of aforementioned anger headache, laid off the juice and drank water. The hour of "go home now or out all night" came about. Noticing where the company was headed in addition to my lack of alcohol's convivial influence, I decided on the former. Goodbyes took about 30 seconds longer than it should have as, while I was saying my final goodbyes, I heard a crash. A computer monitor was on the ground. I had heard glass break. I went over to ascertain the damage and saw two pools of blood, then more, then followed the trail up to Brett's bloody foot. So bloody, you couldn't see the source. I caught a brief glimpse of it when I tried to wipe some of the blood away but it poured down so quick, all I could tell was that it was bad. Oh, and how. I heard stupid things coming out of Brett and Simon's mouth. Things like "It'll be fine", "Just stop the bleeding and put a bandage on it". I argued. They argued back. Marcus sided with me. More arguments back. I decided that, as the most sober person and the only one with a decent look at his foot, there would be no more arguing. We were going to the hospital. The bar staff were unbelievable. They called over a taxi, one of them came with us to the hospital and despite my objections, payed for the taxi and waited in the waiting room until I came out to tell her it was OK. We shall not be walking in empty handed the next time we go to Rain Dogs.
Brett, having had his fair share of beer and whiskey, was in a fine mood. In fact, I couldn't get him to stop laughing. The doctor took it well and let me watch him dig around the inner workings of Brett's toe as well as show me the torn tendon. Very cool. Brett asked me how many stitches. I guessed. Maybe 7 or 8? And how very wrong I was. It was all fun and games until the bill arrived. And it arrived with a thunder. A couple of ATM withdrawals accompanied with Hail Mary's later, we had just enough to pay the bill and get us home. Luckily we have a bit of reserves but a word to the wise. Emergency care at a private, International hospital: not bargain basement prices. But, how could one put a price on Brett's foot, right?
In keeping with the medical theme of the weekend, I left a snoozing, wounded, and hungover Brett to see this. Instead, I forgot where the darn thing was, went to the wrong shopping center but bumped into really fascinating display of preserved conjoined twins, cut to show the shared heart and liver, a preserved brain hemorrhage, kidney and bladder stones, a smoker's lung, and live sperm and dust mites under a microscope (not the same microscope) courtesy of Siriraj Hospital and med students, some of whom spoke English and explained the displays to me. Very high on my cool scale. I will try to make it back to see "Earth from Above" now that I remember where it can be found. I came home with presents for Brett (an Eco book, pharmacy goodies to clean his boo-boo, and the ingredients for mac and cheese).
With such an eventful weekend, Monday was almost a welcomed relief. I came home to find that Brett had cleaned the house, one foot and all. My ill-fated hero.
