Adventures in Medicine

Several weeks ago, I woke up with itchy red bumps on my hands.  After a while and a depletion of will power to resist scratching, they turned into blisters.  A bit later the blisters opened into ugly, pussy wounds.  My fingers swelled and became tender.  The skin around the lesions started to change colors and recede.  This continued for weeks and only seemed to get worse.  Here´s what my hands looked like at almost their worst.  Apologies if you are reading this on a lunch break.  

My hands became a nightly topic of conversation for my family.  They gave lots of theories to what the problem could be.  Cold, heat, something I ate, bites, a plant, etc.  The final conclusion was that I had been cursed by the nearby mountain because I hiked up it.  Nevermind that 3 of my siblings were with me and they were all fine.  My family wanted to put kerosene and vinegar on my lesions to lift the curse.  I was able to get out from under the kerosene, but every night my sister Elena (a nursing student) would come to my room and put vinegar on my wounds, first making a sign of the cross with the droplets then mixing them together.  Surprisingly, it didn´t help and I got tired of discussions of my damnation every evening.  


I eventually made a dermatologist appointment through the PCMOs and got checked out in Lima.  It turns out that it was either a cold injury or infected insect bites.  Either way, I took a round of antibiotics and my hands look better.  


It was an interesting experience.  I often have different opinions than my family on medical issues and treatments.  Some I argue, but the majority I let go.  It´s easier to say that you´re sick because of the cold rather than old meat when you´re stomach won´t let you rest.  I wasn´t too worried about my hands most of the time, but once in a while the creeping thoughts would come in when I was trying to go to sleep.  Bedtime is the realm of creeping thoughts for me.  When my hands were really ugly and it had been going on for weeks, I started to wonder if there was something really wrong with me.  Did I have leprosy or flesh-eating bacteria?  Would I have to go home?


That was the most revelatory thought.  I was surprised how resistant I was to the idea of going home.  For how difficult this experience has been at times and how much I miss people, I really don´t want to leave.  I would consider it a great failure to go home early.  I feel like I have a lot of growing and work to do before I can go back.  It´s nice to know that those feelings are what are in my core and that quitting seems worse to me than the dark times.