Sparkles and Stitches

December 5th was a busy day for me. After witnessing a car accident in the morning and continuing on to Fantasilandia, an amusement park, I then went to my school's gala for cuartos, Chile's version of seniors, a dance and dinner for the kids graduating for my school, Institute Chacabucco.
My best friend Francisco, Pancho for short, and my date for the night picked me up with his parents at 6. The week prior I went shopping with Amanda in Santiago for a dress and shoes. His mom was super cute and started crying when she saw us together.

The gala was held at my school under huge white tents with more flowers I had seen in my entire life. It was in a sense similar to prom in the US, except that it was a lot more fancy and more family orientated. There was a 4 course sit down meal with the family then followed by the dance floor opening up.

Another thing about different is that parties in Chile don't wrap up at the same time parties do in the US. They go all night, and I mean all night, till 5am, but my night, or should I say, morning didn't end that way. At around 4am, I was on the dance floor, without shoes, like all the other girls at this hour, when a kind fellow behind me shattered a glass on the ground. Now when that glass shattered, a piece flew off and cut the heel of my foot, badly. He stumbled behind me, grabbed my shoulder saying "todo bein" which means "all is good" and when I looked down at my foot, all was not good. There was a ton of blood! I was dancing with my friend Joaquin, and when he saw what happened he quickly picked me up and carried me outside to a bench, with Pancho close behind him. Lying down on the bench, people huddled around trying to figure out what happened. I am honestly not a super big fan of blood, so when I saw how much was pouring out, I couldn't keep looking. Javier, another friend of mine in cuarto, who is awesome, ran over and held my head in his lap and kept me distracted. I was once again picked up, this time by Pancho, who then carried me over to the hospital, which was luckily across the street from my school(benefits of a small town).

I was taken into a room where Pancho and I sat waiting for a doctor. The doctor came in and took one look at my heel, and said stitches. Now, I should mention, I like needles even less than I like blood. I reallyyyyyy hate needles, like a hyperventilating, "excuse me miss, but you need to calm down" type of hate. So, I was not excited for this. The doctor sits down to start, when all of a sudden his named is called and he looks to me and says, "Sorry, you are going to have to wait a little longer a patient just came in with an allergic reaction and I need to see to her". Fine with me, more time without a needle entering my skin. The girl with the allergic reaction rolls past in one of those hospital beds, but wait, I know her. It's Claudia! My Chilean friend that went to on exchange to Hood River, Oregon last year that lives in Los Andes also. We have hung out a lot and she was also at the gala. I throw up a peace sign and we share a moment of "well this sucks" and then she rolls away.

Pancho and I waited for a few more moments and a man came into the room and said, "well, lets get started". This man did not look anything like a doctor, no white jacket, but you know what, it was 5am, I rolled with it. And then the doctor and the nurse dove in. Numbing shots, I found out hurt real bad, and have a very very long needle. Pancho was great and supplied me with hands to strangle. Proud to say that I did not cry, but a few "Jesus Christ and Oh my God" slipped out and a certain point the doctor mocked me with a Chilean accented "Jesus Christ". I mean, come on, really, you are sewing into my skin and now your are going to make fun of me, ...thanks.

In the end, I received 7 stitches. When I rolled out of the room and into the lobby, my friend Joaquin and his date were sitting waiting. They came over and said hi and checked in on me, but I was confused as why they were still there, it was 5:30 in the morning! My doctor came up behind me and then say goodbye and my friends walked out, following him. Poncho later told me that my doctor was Joaquin's father and that he stitched me up pro bono. Poncho and I took a taxi back to my house and watched the sun rise over the Andes mountains. I arrived home promptly at 6 am and fell asleep till noon.

The past weeks have been multiple doctors visits, again to Joaquin's dad, then to one doctor in Rotary ( my counselor Denis), and then on from there to Waldo Rodriguez, a plastic surgeon, a friend of Rotary and as I found out while talking to him the cousin of Joaquin's dad ( another benefit of living in a small town). There was a slight scare about a week in because the skin on the lower half of the wound was dying and it was looking like that I was going to need to have surgery and get a skin graft. The doctor decided to give it another week and see if the healing progressed, but if not, again under the needle I would go. Luckily, I did start to heal, but sadly very slowly. This caused me to miss the school trip with my entire grade to Bariloche, Argentina for a week, but seeing as I couldn't walk, there wasn't much I could do.

I must say that this whole stitches situation has been a learning experience in independence. First of all, I went to all of the doctor appointments alone, got lost once, and fumbled my way around in spanish trying to explain exactly what happened. I has also been a lot of alone and down time where I watched more movies and TV shows than I have in all of my life. But, life is still great. Christmas is right around the corner and so is the New Year. I head on vacation with my host family to Iquique, a beach town in the far north of Chile. I hope who ever reads this that your Christmas is lovely and filled with joy, and hopefully a little colder than my high 90 degree weather that has been killing me. Merry Christmas!