The Clutsy Madam?

Nice, mean, irresponsible...today I am the clutsy madam.

It's been a while since I've run with my friends in the morning so when they asked if I would be interested in going this morning, I figured sure, why not? We were going to the botanical gardens for a 6 am start. My friend Sunil was driving so I didn't even have to worry about the dogs at the end of our street. Sure enough, he was waiting just outside our gate at 5:45. I'm not sure where the phrase, "bright and early" comes from because it was nowhere near bright and downright dark. As it turns out, the two other women who normally run with us couldn't make, so he and I started out in the gardens I haven't revisited since our second week here, just before 6.

It was surprisingly crowded with lots of walkers getting out early for some exercise and surprisingly few dogs creeping about. It had all the makings for a lovely morning until about 15 minutes into our run...for the second time in probably six weeks, I fell. (In how ever many years since I've been running fairly consistently, I think I've tripped and fallen all of twice before. Since coming to India, I've now doubled my record. So really, I wouldn't say I'm prone to falling.) Because it was dark, we were on a dirt path and a tree root jumped out right in front of me falling was less embarrassing and more frustrating this morning. I did not feel like I went down too hard and jumped right back up but felt the stinging in my left hand. I felt ok to keep going but Sunil spotted blood and insisted I come home and clean the dirt out of my hand.

It's really no more than a scrape but it's but the kind that burns enough to make it feel worse than it is. I believe some call it, "road rash." I washed it as best I could stand and put some Neosporin on it but we didn't have any band-aids. As my mother would say, I was "letting the air get at it." I tried to take a shower thinking that letting the soap run over it would help, but that proved disastrous - too painful. I tried cleaning it again after I had gotten dressed and put some more Neosporin on but it still looked dirty. I decided it was time to get a band-aid on it. So off Chandan and I went to the drugstore. I went straight back to the "chemist" and he took one look at it and said, "oh, you need to go to a doctor. That needs to get cleaned out and you'll need a tetanus shot." I tried to insist that if I could just get some Bacitracin and a bandage I was sure I'd be fine. But he insisted I go see a doctor. To the Apollo Health Clinic Chandan...

I go to the desk and show the woman my cut and say I'm not sure I really need to see a doctor. She says, "ok, you just want a dressing?" (I remember this from my first visit to the clinic with the stomach bug. The doctor seemed to be asking me what I want as much as telling what I need. "ok, so you want antibiotics?" Well, yes, I guess if you say this bug I've caught is not going to go away on its own.) This time, the woman at the desk tells me for my dressing to go to the first door on the left. I walk in and see a woman at a desk talking to two other women opposite her. They appear to be just chatting so I say, "the woman at the front desk told me to come in here for a dressing," and again show my hand that is now oozing ickiness. She says, "oh yes, just have a seat behind the curtain. Someone will be there in a minute," and continues chatting. I wait and assure myself that everything is sterile despite the chipping paint on the walls and clutter of tools and medical stuff, laid out on old newspapers, on a cart in front of me.

A woman, who looked all of 18, comes in dressed in a cream colored sari and looks at my hand. She smiles but doesn't say anything. I say, "you'll clean this up?" just to make sure we're on the same page. She just gives me the head bob and a not so warm smile and turns to the cart. When she turns around she's got a square of gauze in one hand and a bottle in the other that I think says "peroxide". Instead of pouring the liquid on the gauze and dabbing that on my hand, she pours from the bottle directly on to my open wound with no warning. It brought tears to my eyes, not in the way a good movie does, but in the way pounding your hand with the prongs of a fork might. She didn't seem to notice my wincing and the tears because she turned back to the cart and grabbed another bottle and began the same procedure. Only this time, I'm sure it was pure acid she poured over my hand. There might have been smoke rising from my cut and blisters forming but I couldn't tell because my eyes were too watery and I was afraid I might vomit. She gave me a weak smile and either asked me if it hurt or told me it hurt as she now was scrubbing all of the poison on my raw hand. She must have skipped the nursing classes that talked about how to gently clean wounds. She then said in a tone that made me feel like I was being dramatic (but I promise you I was NOT), "this one won't hurt," and put some ointment on the wound. Then she began unraveling gauze and wrapped my hand in what now looks like a small cast. She said, "tentanus now," wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I wasn't sure what to do with it and was still practicing my yoga breaths to ease the pain. She told me to go back to the front desk where they told me to go next door to the pharmacy.

I gave the slip of paper to the man behind the counter (at the pharmacy) who took it to the woman in a lab coat counting inventory and had a chat. He then went to the small refrigerator in the back and took out a vile of liquid. Then he grabbed a syringe off the shelf, put them in a bag and asked me for 13 rupees (about 30 cents). I asked him what I was supposed to do with it and he looked at me blankly. I asked if I was supposed to take it home and again, he just kind of looked at me and said, "doctor" and pointed next door. So with my syringe and vile I walked back to the clinic and the front desk. The women asked, "you want someone to administer this?" Well, yes, I prefer not to shoot intravenous drugs by myself.

Back to the first room on the left with woman at the desk. This time she appeared to be talking to two pharmaceutical reps. I waited again trying to decide if the burning sensation in my hand was subsiding. The possible pharmaceutical reps left and I waited long enough to wonder if I had misread the situation and was supposed to be somewhere else. Finally, another woman hurried in with her scooter helmet in hand and smiled (genuinely) at me. Her phone rang and she seemed to rush the person off the phone. After she put her things down and her not so clean lab coat on, she turned to me, saw my heavily bandaged hand and asked me what happened. I told her I fell and was waiting for the tetanus shot. She took the vile and syringe from me and started putting them together as she fielded two more phone calls and shooed away some friend of hers in regular street clothes who rushed in. She was much nicer than the first woman and asked me a bit more about where I fell and what I am doing in India. She told me that even though I probably had already had my tetanus shot, "you can never be too safe especially with all the dogs in these parks." She then apologized for all the interruptions and warned me it might pinch. As she was sticking me she kept asking if it hurt but I tried to ask where she was ten minutes ago. I asked her if I could buy some band-aids at the pharmacy next door to replace the gauze. "Well, yes but you come back on Friday and we'll re-wrap it." Despite the whining, it is only a scrape. I'm not really sure it necessitates multiple visits so I went next door and bought some gauze. I think I can manage it from here now that I know it's clean.

The biggest disappointment though, is not that I'm going to be paranoid now about the dogs AND the dark when running in the mornings (which may mean it's all treadmill all the time), but that I had to cancel my second golf lesson. Instead, I'm playing travel agent again today looking for a place where the weak of stomach and clumsy can't get hurt.