Well, let's begin with thanks that I took that Wilderness Medicine course last June. I've had to put skills to work on this trip. I am also thankful for this group. This past weekend we travelled on Friday morning to Nicoya to see a church first built in the 1600's but destroyed by an earthquake and rebuilt the 1800s. We drove by bus to La Fortuna around the large lake in the center of the country. On Sat morning, we left the hotel to experience a rope swing then travel on to see a volcano Arenal. I made it to the rope swing. I was nervous when we first arrived as it was not really a tourist destination- just some local place with a knotted rope over a picturesque but swift moving river. It reminded me of the Burlington Falls. One girl who was hesitant to use it as it was a good 10 foot drop to a very deep pool. Alas, hesitation skills. I was walking up the trail as she launched and hung onto the rope. And continued to hang on past the point of no return. But return she did and decided to let go too close to the rock. She protected her face, I am told, but not her chin which took most of the force. Needless to say, my stomach dropped and knew right away we were in trouble. Luckily most of the guys were in the water and got to her right away. I jumped in after her as quickly as I could. There was a good deal of blood and she was complaining about her teeth. I couldn't tell where the blood was coming from at first, as her front teeth were fine. Then I realized it was her chin, a good two inch incision. We got her to shore, onto the bus and then to a local clinic. I stayed with her while the group continued on with the days itinerary. At the clinic I watched them stitch her up. The girl was stoic, barely crying. Because of the injury to the head we decided it was best to take her to the nearest hospital a 40 minute drive. She was alert and talking through clenched jaws so we took a taxi, driven by Rapheal, and not an ambulance.The bill for the stitches and some pain medication came to $60. We went to San Carlos, a dirty town with a public and private hospital. We took the private hospital. The doctor there spoke English, which was helpful as I was the interpreter and my Spanish consists of vocabulary revolving around food and cerveza. They took a cat scan which showed no signed of serious head trauma and suggested she stay in the hospital for 8 hours for observation. Once I knew she was not seriously hurt, I let her sleep while I tried to get something to eat. But it was like Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan- the shakes started to come. On the outside I was pretty calm, but the inside was churning and I had too much time to think of what could have been.
For the rest of the day, we watched movies, played cards, and Bananagrams. The girl refused to take pain medication and could hardly talk as her jaw and teeth still caused her pain. In between, I was on my phone trying to arrange to meet up with the group at our next destination, a four hour car ride into the mountains. Our next hotel arranged to have someone come pick us up. It was a ride from hell as far as I am concerned with a lot of switchbacks on dirt road with more potholes and rocks than flat dirt. I can't imagine what the girl was thinking, but I am getting nauseous thinking about it.
We arrived at the hotel around 10 at night. Of course there weren't enough rooms for all of us. But I was dead tired and slept a bit, the days events still churning in my head.
The next morning, the group had to choice, suspension bridge tour or zip line tour. The other professor took the group on the bridge and I took the zip liners. It's an intense thrill latched to an inch cable 500 feet above the rainforest canyon zipping along a good 40 mph. There were 12 sections in all, the 2nd to last a surprise Tarzan type swing. Needless to say, swings weren't our friends. Another girl, wearing flip flops against the recommendations of the guides, caught her toe on a rope as she was swinging, which caused a cut and hyper extended it.
Luckily it didn't seem that bad after we got her back to the bus and it doesn't look broken. There is a young (my age) american couple living in town who are doctors. They looked at both of my wounded warriors and told me they should be fine, we just need to look out for infection. The one with the chin however has four chipped broken teeth. yesterday she and I took an hour bus ride to Nicoya to get x rays. She's got some dental work ahead of her this week. The upside is that Costa Rica is medical tourism destination, especially for dental work and it should be hundreds if not thousands cheaper than the US. I've been paying for everything so far and it has cost less than $600 bucks. That's for CAT scans, antibiotics, 8 hours in a hospital, $200 in taxi rides. There's something to be said for socialized medicine.
But my fun isn't over. I still have 11 days. And last night a guy got stung by a scorpion. I am thinking of putting a red cross on our bus when we go away next weekend.
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