Volleyball and the Spanish ER

What better fun is to be had than a 10pm visit to the local ER on a Sunday evening? Yep, that's right, I have now had my first official experience with Spanish medicine. But let's not get ahead of the story.

Last night was the start of the CAS Olimpiadas. Basically, the school is going to have an all-year competition in different sports. Each area of the school (theo dept, ESDES, the high-school, the taskforce, local college kids, etc) gets to form two co-ed teams of ten players. Once a month, all the teams will have a one-night tournament in a certain sport. Sports to be played include vball, bball, soccer, football, running, cycling, possibly more, I don't know.

Regardless, last night was the first night and they decided to start with the best sport possible: volleyball. Woot woot! Needless to say, I was excited. It started at 8pm with a worship talk and then all the teams started warming up. After we found out that our team wasn't playing right away, we moved off to the side. However, one of the girls helping run the tournament came and asked Kimmy and I if we wanted to play with one of the highschool teams. They had only one girl and needed more. We agreed, thinking it would be a good warm-up for our actual game. For me, it turned out to be all the volleyball I would play for the entire night.

The first game of the match went relatively well. Only I played, Kimmy was going to switch with me for the second game of the match. Neither team was that great; it was like a junior high game. Our team lost, but it was no sweat off my back cause it wasn't really my team. Horrible of me, I know. Anyway, so we switched sides and then they decided that they wanted three girls on the court so Kimmy jumped in. But then one of the boys was upset cause there was no room for him and he would have to sub in. So the one girl that was SUPPOSED to be on the team left the court. Which made me feel bad but I didn't know the right words to tell her to come play for me. I guess if I had tried a little harder I could have gotten the point across and then life would have been better for all involved.

Anyway, so we're a couple points into the second game, and I'm up playing front left. A ball comes my way from the back and I jump up to hit it. And it would have been a decent hit too, except that one of the boys who was playing middle decided that he needed to go for the ball too. This meant only one thing, that we collided in the air, with his elbow or hand or head or shoulder or SOMETHING connecting forcefully with the right side of my glasses (why was I wearing glasses to play volleyball? because I had worn them before to play and nothing bad had happened. lesson learned: change to contacts when you actually do think about it before going up to the gym for volleyball). My instincts kicked in and my glasses were off my face and in my right hand before I even realized that my right eye was hurting. When I did feel the pain, a split second later, I put my other hand up to my face like anyone else would. That was the point where I started to freak because even without my glasses on, I could see blood dripping from my face down to my hand. And where the eye is concerned, blood is NOT a good thing. I immediately began thinking of things like cut corneas and blindness and it wasn't too happy.

So of course I left the court and at first was just standing there wondering who I should talk to, where I should go, what I should do. One of the other players from the other team that I'd played volleyball before on weeknights took me to the bathroom and told me to wash my face and the injury with water. Which I did until I was told to go to the athletic department. Luckily, a couple different nurses were in the gym that night and so they took care of me, giving me gauze and wiping my face with iodine and telling me that I had just won a free trip to the ER.

Oh, I haven't said yet, I was extremely lucky, and my glasses only cut the skin above and below my eye. My eye and eyelid were perfectly fine. But since the cut below was just big enough, one of the nurses told me that it would be best to go to the ER and get stitches since it would heal faster. I'm also assuming that I'll have a smaller scar.

Maite, one of the assistant deans, and Rita, theo major I think, drove me down to the dorm where I grabbed my passport and my camera. Then it was off to the hospital.

Although I was a little worried about Spanish medicine and getting stitches (considering I've got a pretty ugly scar on my back from a botched stitching job), the experience on a whole was fairly decent and actually the quickest ER service I've ever had. We didn't even wait for more than 2 or 3 minutes. The two doctors conferred and decided that I didn't need actual stitches, mainly because it was fairly small and it was in a difficult position to stitch anyways. Which made me extremely happy because the thought of a numbing shot in my face did NOT excite me.

The doctor cleaned and disinfected both cuts and then put these sticky strip thingies on the bottom cut to hold it together. Throughout the whole process, he was asking questions or making comments in Spanish. For the most part, I kept on having to look in confusion at Maite and Rita. Maite, who doesn't speak English, would repeat it in slower or simpler Spanish and I would either understand or not. If not, I would then look at Rita for English, since she speaks pretty decent English. As he was putting on the strips, he kept asking "te molesta?" which for those of you who don't speak Spanish, means "is it bothering you?" And I kept replying no and that it was all good. Which it was. Thankfully the cut really didn't hurt at all. What DID hurt and what made me reply "si" to the "te molesta?" question was when they put a square of stuff over the strips to help keep them in place. I think it's a square of the stuff they use to make casts. It looks like gauze but it's stiff and stuck to my face without tape or anything on top. That stuff was the only thing in the whole night that actually made me cry. And of course the doctor told me to stop crying because the wetness wasn't good for the bandage. Then he gave me a ghetto cold pack to hold to my eye. This cold pack consisted of two ice cubes in a tied surgical glove wrapped in gauze. Yeah.

After he was done doctoring me up and the other doctor had come and told him "good work," it was on to the instructions part. Instructions like "don't get it wet" and "try not to stretch that part of your face" and "come back tuesday so we can check it and make sure the cut isn't pulling apart." This is the most ironic part of the whole deal. Tuesday, we (ESDES) are leaving for a cultural tour to Barcelona until Friday. And we're leaving at 7:45am. Which means that I obviously can't go back for a checkup. Upon hearing this news, the doctor then told Maite that I need to go to a hospital in Barcelona. What fun! Especially since the professor that's directing this tour is Luis Amoros, who, of course, is one of the few professors who doesn't speak English. Which should make for a fun time all-around if they need any specific information from me or need to tell me any specific instructions. Hopefully nothing gets lost in translation.

And that's all folks! Please pray that I heal quickly and neatly and the scar's not too bad. Here's a day after pic: