So two days ago (monday) I made an unwise decision that led to me ending up in the hospital. I am okay, let me explain.
So I was home alone, getting ready to go out, and for the life of me could not find my keys. I searched upstairs and downstairs and in my bag and couldn't find them. Never before had I not been able to find my keys. I could not find another set of keys. I found the gate outside to be locked. That was when I made the unwise decision to jump over the edge of the balcony to the ground below. I'm not quite sure how to explain the layout of my house...I live in like, weird condominium/apartment type buildings. To get to my 'house' I go up some stairs and go through a metal gate and pass someone else's 'house' and then there's my 'house'. So after you pass through the metal gate, there's like a walk way with a halfheight wall, and leaning over that half-wall thing, you can see the ground below. I didn't think it was
that tall. I did not think through my options. I did not think 'I'll wait a few hours until my host siblings get home from school and can unlock the gate.' I did not think 'These converse have no traction what so ever, and the sidewalk down there is slippery.' And so I hoisted myself up and let myself drop down. I think my feet hit the ground but then immediately went out from under me and I hit the cement hard on my butt, so my feet took some of the blow and my butt/waist for the rest. I was kind of shocked for a moment there, sitting on the sidewalk below. I was barely there for a few seconds, or at least it seemed like a very short amount of time, and almost immediately a lady came out her door (right next to where I had landed) because she had heard something hit the ground. She called serenazgo (kind of like police here, they're like neighborhood watch people kind of) and within a few minutes there were like 4 of them surrounding me. They told me not to move, I stayed seated on the ground. I don't really remember the pain from that point. I remember not really being able to move my right leg and my waist and lower back. My right side hurt more, I hit harder on that side I guess. I got very, very scared. I thought 'oh god what have I done, I've paralyzed myself, I've ruined the rest of my exchange, I'll be in a wheelchair' and I had to explain to the serenazgo through my crying that I was home alone, that I was not even from Peru, that I was an exchange student and had no family here. My host mom's cell phone wasn't working so I couldn't contact her. I called my old host mom and got no answer. I called my rotary contact to find that the number in my phone was wrong. I called about 6 exchange students to get the correct number from said contact. After each 'leave your message' voicemail response, I panicked more and cried harder. Finally an exchange student from Germany answered and gave me the number and the serenazgo called the rotary contact and said they'd be taking me to a clinic called Good Hope. An ambulance arrived, they lifted me in one of those flat things that I am completely forgetting the name of. A neighbor lady had to come with me in the ambulance, I didn't even know who she was. I called my best friend Chachi and told him I'd hurt myself and was going to the clinic and he left right away with his mom to meet us there. In the ambulance I think I may have had some sort of panic attack because my hands went numb and stiff and only once I started breathing better did they return to normal. We arrived at the clinic pretty fast, and they wheeled me in on the flat thing that, again, I don't know the name of. And I remember not really understanding because they wheeled me in and left me in the wheely thing against the wall and I was lying there, crying, wondering why people were passing me and not doing anything, why no one was helping me. I don't know. I was so scared, I'd ever been in a situation like that before. A rotary man arrived and soon after, Chachi and his mom arrived and Chachi stood by me for a while, and I remember crying and saying 'oh chachi I'm so stupid, I feel like such an idiot, I think I broke my ankle' because what was hurting me the most was my right ankle, right wrist, and right hip. Spoiler alert= turns out nothing was broken. And I remember a man coming up to me, he spoke to me in English, he told me "I'm not your doctor, but I wanted to ask how you're doing" and I said something like "I'm okay" and I told him "your english is so good" and he said "I lived in Chicago" and I said "I'm from wisconsin" and he laughed and said "the green bay packers always beat the bears" and I laughed and it kind of hurt to laugh haha. A little while later I got wheeled into a different room to get an xray. It was really painful because I had been laying down the whole time and couldn't even really move. But I had to stand up to get the xray of my waist to make sure my hip wasn't fractured or something. And so the two xray technician people had to help me out of the wheely thing and I could barely stand there holding onto the xray machine, I'm sure those xrays were hardly readable, I was shaking and crying quite a bit haha. Anyways, after that, I laid back down in the wheely thing and they wheeled me into a different room to wait until the xray could be read. And I was there waiting for a long time. I think I slept a little bit. I couldn't really move without a lot of pain. Eventually they told us that nothing was broken. They gave me an injection for the pain above my right hip (in my back). It helped quite a bit but I panicked a bit before they gave it to me (I was scared of the needle). Then I was eased into a wheelchair and wheeled out into waiting room where everyone was waiting for me. In total, I think I was at the hospital for like 3 or 4 hours maybe, I don't remember. I got helped into the car and they took me to my third host family because they couldn't get ahold of my host mom until later that evening. I spent the night at my third host family's house and in the morning returned to my second host family. I don't know if you guys remember from my last post, but I had said that 'supposedly' we would be changing on Monday. Yeah, turned out that one of the families was going on a trip and so that was really not coordinated well haha so it was changed to the 11th. So I'll be here till the 11th. Anyways, it was the worst day ever. I feel terrible (not only because of the pain) but because I caused a lot of worry and issues (apparently, through word of mouth or I don't know, people came to think that I had fallen from the second floor of a building). I feel completely embarrassed and occasionally miserable after this, I don't want to live in this house anymore because I leave and the neighbors are watching me, and all I see in these buildings now is the spot in the balcony where I jumped off. And I am reaaaaally not in a good spot with my rotary club now and am dreading the chewing out I'm going to get from them, I've already heard from enough people 'you shouldn't have done that' as if I didn't already know that! Them telling me that changes NOTHING, all it does is make me feel worse. I cannot go back in time. I cannot undo what I did. I was not trying to hurt myself. I was not trying to hurt anyone else. I made a mistake. I regret the decision I made that. And no one can say they have never made a decision that they regret, no one can say they haven't done something they wish they hadn't have done.
Anyways, they gave me pain pills and already I am doing better, that day I couldn't walk without some assistance, yesterday I was walking as slowly as a 95 year old, today maybe I'm up to the speed of a 70 year old, and you should see the struggle it is to get up off the couch...but nothing is broken, my body is bruised and my ego is bruised but I'll be fine. As for the pain, I just compare it to this: You know when you are a complete lazy bum and you do no exercise whatsoever for a reaaally long time and then one day you do TONS of really tough exercises and you over do it? And then the next day you are so sore that you can barely bend yourself, if you drop the remote control you have to ask someone to pick it up, getting out of bed is painful, sitting down on the toilet is difficult, all that jazz. Yeah, that's kind of how it is, a strong version of that haha. But each day is less painful and I am estimating that I'll be back to normal by around Sunday.
The second part of bad news is that yesterday there was a VERY strong earthquake in a northern city in Chile called Iquique and the earthquake was felt in southern Peru as well. The earthquake was 8 point something, I don't remember...that's really strong. Now there are tsunami warnings. I don't think it will affect us, but it's kind of scary to think about it. I don't mean to worry you guys. Everything will be okay.
Okay so that's all my terrible news. On a lighter note, yesterday Chachi visited me in the afternoon so that was nice and cheered me up a bit.
I can't think of anything else.
Here's to a hopefully good rest of my week!
-Ginger
