There are times when Karma is trying to tell you something and you just don’t listen. Now I’m listening! About two weeks ago, I dropped a crate full of wet dive gear weighing approximately 15 pounds on my left big toe. I’m pretty sure that I fractured it. It didn’t turn all the funky colors that John’s toe kaleidoscoped through, but the pain did escalate and has yet to go away fully and it’s still swollen. But two days ago now, I slipped on the fuel-laden deck of the piece of shit boat, Pasadena, we’ve been forced to dive off of since our big boat is at the shipyard. In a very cartoonesque manner, my butt came out from under me and what stopped my fall was my foot jamming into a piece of protruding metal from the railing. Now the pain from the gash kept together by 3 stitches has taken front stage to the pain in my toe!
The gash in the foot occurred right before dive 2 whilst on an afternoon dive with two Discover Scuba Diving students on a day that I had opted to take off diving, but being the only instructor who hadn’t dove in the morning and who wasn’t laying home sick with the flu, I drew the short stick to go afternoon diving. One of my students was already in the water when this happened. My other student implored me to take care of my foot before we went diving. Instead I hurriedly stuck a large piece of gauze to it and wrapped layers of tape around it. The sight of blood pouring out of my foot was quickly making me very woozy and every moment spent on deck was reducing the chances of my hopping in for dive 2. In EFR I learned that the blood coming out of my foot was arterial blood as it was bright red in color and spurty!
Back on shore, I got rid of my students and went to collect Ryan at Adventure Club (his shop) to take me to the hospital and started hobbling down Main Street. A friend of ours took pity and loaned me his bike so I could wheel myself to the hospital. I still had the bike until this morning and it was a tremendous help.
The stitching process I was not looking forward to. First came shots of novocaine which were painful enough. I started screaming, digging into Ryan’s hand and yelling at him, “I don’t like her, tell her I don’t like her” (referring to the mean evil nurse lady with all the needles). I’m very confused how she did the novocaine because the 3rd stitch was completely out of novocaine range and I screamed so loud I’m sure they heard me clear cross the island.
Prior to this, I’ve spent about the past week feeling a little burnt out. I was not giving 100% of my best customer service. My briefings were lacking and I was edgy and I’m sure my customers could tell. We were dealing with less than ideal conditions at Barakuda. Our big boat motor crapped out and off it went to the shipyard. So we’ve been diving off the POS Pasadena, which is okay when conditions are flat, but we’ve had a big stormfront coming through so conditions have been positively craptacular.
One advantage of working at Barakuda is that while I still have to do shop shifts, I don’t necessarily have to sell what I dive. The disadvantage to that is that you sometimes get people who’s expectations have been built up a little too much. And you’re left to deal with the fallout. I’d been dealing with a bit of that as well last week. One of the guys who’s worked at Barakuda for quite some time spends, in my opinion, way too much time on the sauce. And the crap that comes out of his mouth when he’s drunk is fodder for making those of us who have to dive his sales very upset. Ryan calls him Peter Griffin – there is a very, very, very large physical resemblance.
So everything was pissing me off and I was getting a little anti-Barakuda and very much in need of a break. Karma dealt me this and now I can’t dive for a week.
I would have been even more pissed if we hadn’t already scheduled a visa run to Kuala Lumpur to occupy four of those seven days that my foot is requiring me to be out of the water. I think that I’m experiencing a very small taste of what it’s like to be a Mexican laborer in California. I’ve been injured. My injury cost me 1350 baht (which is like 38 bucks, but when you consider that I only made 50 bucks that day, spending 38 on health care sucks), I’m uninsured and I’m out of work for seven days during which time I cannot make any money.
I’ve considered asking Barakuda to pay for my hospital bill since their boat broke me, but I go back and forth on how much of it is their fault and how much is mine and how much of it is Karma kicking me in the ass, telling me I needed a break. In all fairness though, I had already complained to them how slippery the deck of the POS Pasadena was which in the States would give me big cause for having them pay for my hospital bill. But then again, in the States, I’d also be covered by workman’s comp. I dunno. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. There’s also much to be said for still having employment!
Over the weekend of the 19th was International Clean-up. Our friends from Blue View organized a major clean-up effort – one day of beach and one day of underwater. I was called in to work to do some diving for the beach day, but I was able to join them for the underwater one. The plan was to do two dives off of Phi Phi Ley to clean up some of the fishing nets the Thais tie to the reef. Cutting fishing nets off of staghorn coral is a daunting, incredibly infuriating task. Dive 1 we did in front of Viking Cave – huge cave cut into the side of the island and inhabited by Thais who scale the side of the island to go get the nests for the birds nest soup. In front of it, we found large quantities of tires and batteries. I even found a camera in its case (not underwater housing). Ryan was finally yesterday able to get the pictures off the memory stick. Unfortunately nothing that I can send to the tabloids and make millions. Rats!
Dive 2 we did at the south end of the island called Grouper’s Corner. About 20 minutes into that dive, unbeknownst to me, our friend Lisa was forced to do an emergency ascent. I found her on the boat, breathing O2 when my buddy and I got back up. What puzzled me later was that I ran across her buddy about 50 minutes into the dive solo diving, screwing around with leopard sharks in 15 meters of water and 3 minutes into deco (i.e., no longer recreational limits). This person is a dive pro and apparently also a retard.
Lisa spent the past week at the recompression chamber in Phuket. She did bend herself. She already began experiencing symptoms of decompressions sickness on the boat and continued to experience symptoms for just about the duration of the week. But she’s recovering and only needs to be out of the water for a month. When you consider all the possible alternatives, she’s very lucky. It will be interesting to hear all the details and stories from her talks with the chamber attendants. She is also very grateful that she had DAN insurance. They covered everything. She said otherwise it would have cost her 7300 Euros.
A month ago just about now, we’d planned this visa run to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ryan, you may recall, had categorically refused to get on another 12-hour minivan ride ever again after our Penang visa run. Honestly, with advanced planning, we flew to KL for barely more than the cost of the minivan to Penang. Our friend Gee randomly decided to come with us. We were to meet at 8:00 this morning at Phi Phi Bakery to have breakfast before catching the 9:00 ferry to Krabi (I had to keep reminding myself that we were flying out of Krabi and not Phuket).
Gee called early this morning to say that he couldn’t find his passport. His passport has disappeared. He’s fairly certain it was stolen by a certain person he had over in his room. So now, instead of a fun filled 3 days in KL with us (which he needed as much as I did), he’s stuck figuring out the logistics of getting a new passport. Luckily, he’s got until the 9th of October before he has to leave Thailand without incurring a daily overstay fee, but the British consulate told him it would take 10 days to get a replacement passport. And it being low season, he absolutely does not have the money for this whole mess. Whoever stole his passport has the devil coming after him/her.
I’m typing this from a bus taking us from the KL airport to KL Sentral Station. I know my dad is thinking that I should be looking outside at the scenery instead of at my computer screen, but honestly, it looks like every other suburban highway. We could be in the outskirts of Paris, Taipei, the Bronx (hell, we just passed Yankee Stadium).
We have plans to eat a lot of Indian food while here, do lots of shopping and maybe see a movie. We may go see the Petronas Towers (world’s 2nd tallest buildings?) and possibly hit the aquarium only because it’s been recommended. We’ll keep you posted.
Goodnight and Good Luck!
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