First Casualty

So I had an awesome weekend! I went hiking on Saturday with some of my new friends here! and Sunday spent all day site-seeing around the island. This included a trip to the Grotto. A cave of sorts that fills with water and you can swim in it. So of course, I had to jump in. and once I jumped in once, I needed a new challenge. I saw these kids scaling the rock wall on the side to jump in. Being scared of water, my first thought was not to follow them, but the more I watched, the more I wanted to jump. So a really nice local boy helped me up the rock wall to a cliff about 20 feet above the water. I was looking down thinking, “what did I do???” but there was no turning back. So in I jumped. With a whole gamut of spectators cheering me on! It was awesome!!!! The not awesome part is that I cut my hand climbing up the wall. It wasn’t that bad of a cut, I washed it out and by the evening looked like it was healing up nicely. But at about midnight, I woke up with a horrible pain in my hand..I kept waking up off and on throughout the night with this horrible pain in my hand and fingers. When my alarm went off, I looked at my hand and thought..”uh oh” But lunch time, it was red, swollen, and filled with pus. (sorry for the details) The office staff was concerned so I called in a favor from a dear friend and went off to the urgent care. The diagnosis-an infection. and possibly a serious one. So I am on heavy antibiotics for the next week and under strict orders to come back if it doesn’t get better soon. It’s crazy-you just have to be so much more careful here because bacteria lives on everything and most of the coral is really sharp. So first casualty of the trip..an infected hand. I promised the doctor I would TRY to not come back again..but no promises. I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie:)