This week was a unique one for me. In all the past entries, I’ve tried writing from a more general perspective, including themes that I believe most people would relate to or find helpful in some way. I hope this has been the case so far. However, for this entry, I’m going to venture out of the realm of the general and share a personal experience I’ve undergone in the past few days. 

 

      A week and a half ago, on Thursday night, I crashed on a Link electric scooter. I flew, shin-first, into a metal pole. In the following moments, I sat down, grabbed my leg, and processed the searing pain. I had a bleeding, open wound, not too terrible, but a wound nonetheless, lining my shin. After the pain had finally ceased, I got back up, and continued on with my night as if nothing had happened. 

 

     The next day, my friends and I made our way to Nerja, a beach town near Malaga on the Andalucian coast. It cost 30 Euros for two bus tickets, and we found a cheap Airbnb at a great location. With each day of swimming, the salt water slowly ate away at my wound. I thought the sea would serve as the ultimate healing tool and disinfectant, however, I believe I crossed a line, and after three days, my wound was left more apparent and vulnerable than ever before. 

 

     I thought this was part of the process and ignored the visual warning sign smeared across my shin. After one night back at the dorms, I woke up with a stinging sensation in my shin. I brushed it off, thinking, “It hurts a little more than before, " but it was no big deal. In class that day, the pain gradually increased. In my 8:30-10:30 class, it was an annoyance- a lingering pain that wouldn’t go away. Maybe a soft three on the pain scale. By the time I was in my 10:30-12:30, it had moved up to a four- it had made a point of making itself known- seemingly, my brain hated that I was ignoring it. The pain increased to six during my 12:30-2:30, escalating with every passing second. All I could think about and focus on was how terribly my leg hurt. A throbbing, burning sensation, as if dozens of people with red hot shoes decided to start kicking me up and down my shin, overtook my leg.

 

    I texted the API emergency contact, and they gave me the address of the nearest hospital and a number to call for the taxi. Sitting and listening to people speak in broken, accented Spanish, about sports and movies in my oral and written production class, for two hours, while my leg was knee-deep in a lava pit, killed me. I vividly remember the unique sensation of making small talk with someone, trying to smile and nod, asking questions about their hometown and whatnot, while feeling like I was suffering from some horrible venom, screaming and cursing inside. 

 

      After what felt like forty years, I got out of class, limped over to my friend, who’s fluent in Spanish, and told her I needed help getting to the pharmacy.  Despite the severity of my pain, I stayed intent on getting this issue resolved as quickly as possible. After limping to the pharmacy, to my disappointment, they told me I’d need oral antibiotics. My friend and I got in a taxi and went to the clinic. At the clinic, the nurse inspected my wound- upon first glance, she looked at it and said “Oof. Super infetado,” with hand gestures complementing her melodramatic tone. They had no doctor available, so we went to the ER, where we sat for a while, joking endlessly about my leg. Finally, I was sent to a doctor, who prescribed me painkillers and antibiotics. 

 

     At this point, the lower half of my leg was practically paralyzed, so I shuffled, hobbled, and limped over to the nearby pharmacy with my friend, my arm around her shoulder. There, we got pads, disinfectant, bandages, painkillers and antibiotics. Altogether, this cost 35 euros. The doctor’s visit cost me nothing due to CISI insurance, and the clinic cost 7 euros for the examination fee. With a leg that would’ve been considered gone in medieval times and would’ve cost a minimum-wage employee two weeks' worth of work in the US to fix, I managed to leave with only about forty euros in damages. 

 

     I planned to go to Gibraltar and Portugal over the long weekend. Instead, I was bedridden on Wednesday and Thursday,  limping heavily on Friday, and only beginning to recover function in my leg this weekend. While people went to Paris and Italy, I watched a French show on Netflix in bed. 

 

      So, be careful with scooters. If you get an injury, clean it and bandage it immediately, rather than ignoring it like I did. Don’t expect saltwater to be the antidote to your wounds. Expect it to make them worse if you’re in it for a long time. And if you ever do find yourself in a situation where your leg, or your arm, or any other part of your body is infected, head straight to the ER with a friend (I don’t know what the hell I would’ve done if I was on my own), and thank God for the generosity of the European healthcare system. 

 

      One last thing I’ll add- when I was sitting, alone in my room (my roommate was gone for the weekend), cleaning my wound and bandaging it, I felt truly adult. I thought, this is something that, if it happened a few years ago, my mom would’ve done for me. I would be sitting here, wincing in pain, while my mom gently sprayed disinfectant on my wound and bandaged it for me. However now, it was just me. If I didn’t clean my wound, it would get worse. If I didn’t remember to take my antibiotics and painkillers at the right time, my leg wouldn’t heal, and I’d be back at the ER. There was no one here to tell me to do these things. My health and well-being were in my hands, and my hands only, for the first time. Procrastination, laziness, and blaming others weren’t really an option unless I wanted to be in pain and regress to how I’d felt on Tuesday. Even if I did choose to do this, I’d eventually have to realize that my rehabilitation lay solely in my hands. From now on, I am my own caretaker.

 

      Furthermore, other than the reality check I’d faced with this newfound, college-freshman independence, I’d been given a lesson on the importance of having friends. Without my friend who went with me to the pharmacy, clinic, and ER, I would’ve been completely screwed, trying to speak Spanish to nurses, doctors, and staff as I underwent the most atrocious pain I’d ever felt in my life. She ensured we got everything I needed at the pharmacy. She was the reason I could sit and rest instead of talking to a million people about technical paperwork and insurance. My roommate, during the days I was completely bedridden, brought me fruit, granola bars, and Red Bull (knowing it’s my favorite drink). He filled my water bottle up for me when I couldn’t walk to fill it up on my own. My friend in the dorms, who also stayed in Granada for the weekend, coordinated with the chefs downstairs, bringing me three meals a day in takeaway boxes so I didn’t have to try to go down myself and risk getting hurt or making my infection worse. After a night out, my friends stopped by the dorms, met me with a big group hug, and we all sat outside (I took the elevator down and limped outside, as my leg was still partially paralyzed), after I’d spent an entire day inside my room in my bed. Without my friends, this experience would’ve been a thousand times worse in every aspect. In times when you need them most, true friends will be there for you, and in those times, you realize how immensely lucky, and grateful, you are to have them. 

 

          -Rafa 10/15/23