The Emergency Room

Last Wednesday morning we were downtown checking on bus times for the next day. I was planning on traveling to Gulu to teach some professional development material over the weekend. We checked the times and then walked for about 20 minutest to get out of downtown before catching a boda (motorcycle taxi) back to cornerstone. Riding bodas is the single most dangerous activity one can engage in Africa. There are apparently entire hospital wards dedicated to boda accident victims. We have been trying to take them as sparingly as possible but because they're so convenient and because strangely they feel so safe we had lulled ourselves into a false sense of security. We'd been taking them more and more.

Back to Wednesday. We hopped on the back of a motorcycle near the Speke hotel and headed back to Cornerstone. Everything was fine, not too much traffic on the road. When we got to the last round-about that's only a 1/3 of a mile from cornerstone we circled all the way around it and then our boda driver slowed and stopped before merging onto Yusuf road (a major thoroughfare). He stopped because there was a small grey truck flying down at about 50 mph...I'm thankful he didn't pull out in front of this car. So we were stopped there for just a few seconds right against the curb on the inside of the roundabout when I see out of the corner of my eye coming from our left a small corolla-type car coming straight down the roundabout. Turns out he didn't see us, he was looking at the oncoming traffic.

Its impossible to forget the crunch sound as vehicles collide. The car slammed right into the back of our motorcycle while we were stopped. The second that followed is a little fuzzy, but given the pattern of bruising, the bumped of the car hit the back tire of the motorcycle and the back of my left leg all at once. I was wearing sandals, no helmet & short sleeves, Crystal was in slip-on shoes, short sleeves and of course no helmet. The bike lurched forward with the impact and spilled its cargo of humans into the street. I had already been ejected off the bike and was airborne at this point. Crystal toppled down with the bike pretty hard ending up a couple of fee from it sitting down on the tarmac. As soon as I hit the ground I was pretty sure I had broken my leg. My foot was under the bumper at impact and in addition to the lacerations I could see had that unmistakable feeling of nerve-freak out--like fire ants on an ant hill. I found myself sitting in the middle of the road and the moment I hit the street I knew I had to get out of there even if I had to crawl. Ugandan drivers lack a certain politness and caution. Its dangerous to even cross the street much less lay down in it with injuries.

I hit my heel against the ground to see if I felt that patented bone-grind that I am unfortunately too familiar with. I didn't feel broken--damaged yes, broken no. I stood up and put weight on it, yep there is definitely something wrong with it but it would take weight for a few steps even if it was only adrenalin making it possible. I took a full 3 or 4 steps before getting to Crystal she was sitting in the road holding her knees still screaming. I picked her up carried her out of the road across the sidewalk and laid her down in the grass in the middle of the round-about. It was quite obvious that she'd injured her left foot too. There was an unmistakable hole right through the top/inside of her foot that mined deep down in there. It was all white and inside and hadn't started bleeding yet. I moved her ankle around asking her if it was broken and although she was wincing and still screaming, her ankle was also absent of that bone-grinding. Not broken. The puncture had yielded a single stream of yellow fluid that dripped down her arch, no blood yet.

I pulled out my phone to call someone from cornerstone to come pick us up and take us to the ER but before I did, the boda driver who was unharmed since we had graciously absorbed the blow for him picked up Crystal and carried her to a car across the street to a car that was waiting. I limped in pursuit. They drove us the a clinic called, "The Surgery" which is right across the street from cornerstone and is the best clinic in Kampala. We didn't know it at the time, but our chauffeur was actually the man who had slammed into us. We received prompt attention and was focusing on calming down Crystal whose screams had now mixed with tears.

The checked us out and Crystal received three stitches in her foot. Before putting them in, however, the doctor called me to stand up and watch as he dug into the 3/4 inch hole with tweezers to show me that there was no debris still left in there. I could feel the blood draining from my face and my vision starting to tunnel in. I knew I had about 5 seconds to step back and sit down in the chair or I was going to be on the floor.

Crystal ended with a prominent puncture would and a very bruised heel and leg and some auxillary scratches to accent the others. I sprained my ankle and it promptly swelled up to softball size that afternoon complete with a tasteful stripe of purple and blue across my arch. The back and outside of my leg are extremely bruised and my calf feels suspiciously like a broken fibula (yes, I know precisely what a broken fibula feels like). I've speculated whether my leg may have broken if it hadn't had a titanium rob in there to keep intact. My elbow is sprained also and there's a formidable bump on the outside and a nice gash on the inside of my forearm.

We're quite thankful to God that our injuries are not worse...no broken bones, no surgery, no emergency evacuation back to the states. We'll be fine. Our injuries are just not consistent with the physics of the impact. We didn't skid or roll, we both left as though we were quite literally laid down softly on the pavement. We've just been laying low and healing. Crystal cannot put weight on her foot yet so I've been carrying her sometimes in my arms, sometimes on my shoulders for a little bit longer trek. I'm lucky to have such a small wife.

SOOOOO...AS IF WE HADN'T HAD ENOUGH OF THE EMERGENCY ROOM, on Friday evening we went to Ethiopian food with some friends. We hired a car to drive us and it was so good to get off house-arrest for a bit. The food was delicious, cooked in a hole in the wall by an ethiopian refugee--it was legit. After dinner Crystal wasn't feeling that well and so she rested in bed and I watched part of a movie in the little common area of the guesthouse with some other expats. About an hour into it, crystal hops to the door and calls for me. I came over and she said she'd been trying to puke for half an hour and felt awful. She was also starting to break out in hives and a rash on her hips and behind her knees. We decided to give it 15 mins to see if it got worse--and worse it got. In 10 mins here legs were covered in welts all over. I've never seen anything like it. It was 1:30 in the morning and so I put crystal on my shoulders and walked across the street to The Surgery again. She had some sort of alergic reaction to the food and they gave her a shot of hydrocortisone which solicited another round of shaking & near-hyperventilation (Crystal's not so fond of needles, or blood or anything of the sort). It cleared up and she's fine.

She took her first steps today with the help of a 9-iron as a cane. Thank you for your prayers.