My First Stitches, or, Look Mom, My Tendon!

Tuesday evening, around 4 o’clock. I’d just finished cleaning eggs with Nicol and we were planning on going on one of our regular walks around the area (though they’re probably more appropriately called hikes – this place is steep!) Luz and Memo had gone to San Isidro for an appointment, and wouldn’t be back for a while. Before leaving, Luz asked me to give the emus some sugar cane after my host brother chopped it up. Memito, however, had gone off on some errand that seemed more fun than chopping up cane, and I wasn’t sure he’d come back before it got dark. So, I decided that no machismo men were around to look at me condescendingly as I picked up a machete, and that I would just go ahead and do it myself. Sugar cane under one arm, machete in the other, I set off.
Ping! Ping! Ping! The skin of the sugar cane flew off as I hacked into the delicious insides (and, truth be told, plotted about keeping a few pieces for myself.) But as I tossed the chunks in with the emus, I realized that they were really pretty wide for the emus to eat in one gulp. So, why not cut the cane down the middle first? Ping! Ping! THUNK. I looked down at my left hand with curiousity, then horror. The skin on the first knuckle of my index finger was neatly parted, revealing surprisingly little blood but a lot more of the inside of me than I ever wanted to see. What was that white thing? BONE?! I dropped the machete where it lay and started off for the house, knowing that I would need to be as calm as possible when telling Nicol what happened. I was, after all, the adult in the house for the evening, until Luz and Memo came home.

Thankfully, Nicol was a champ. After a shared bout of feeling lightheaded and sick, we rallied and got to work. Nicol boiled water and found a clean shirt to cut up while I clamped my hand shut. We cleaned the cut, wrapped it, and I ate some chocolate crackers to keep my blood sugar up. (Such a sacrifice.) Then, we waited. And waited. One of the drawbacks of being a campesina is that the hospital is not exactly right around the corner, and not everyone carries cellphones. If it had been a true emergency, there were plenty of neighbors to run to that would have helped us out in a hearbeat. In general though, trips to the hospital are taken at a more…leisurely pace than in the States.

Around 7:30, they finally pulled up in the driveway, and we were on our way back to town in just a few minutes. I walked into the emergency room expecting a long wait and lots of frustration, but was seen to a bed almost right away. I think I must have been a bit of a curiousity, because twice I thought that the doctor had arrived to see me, when instead they had instead just come to chat and find out why I was there. The normal confusion over who exactly I was followed. (You’re not an exchange student? You live on a farm just because you… want to? Where?! Hm…..)

At last, a nurse came in to see me, looked at my hand, and got to work. She injected anesthesia all around the cut, and that was the last thing that hurt for a good long while. I was so numb that it felt like I was watching someone else’s hand get washed and sewed up. Fascinating, but a little disorienting. I was on my way in no time.

So. Frankenhand and all, I’m back at the farm, on forced vacation. When almost everything you do day to day involves hauling or pulling or animal waste or all three, infection and pulled stitches loom large. So far, I’ve only mastered collecting eggs. One hand shooing chickens and grabbing eggs, the other in a plastic bag, high in the air. With luck, though, I’ll soon be back at work with only a unique souvenir to show for it.