Nature Wants us to be Mediocre

Nature wants us to be mediocre because we have a greater chance to survive and reproduce. Mediocre is as close to the bottom as it is to the top, and will give you a lousy life.

~ Lululemon

I got them out – my stitches that is. It had been a full two weeks and it seemed as though the day would never come. I had injured myself on November 22, while trialing a new activity for Activity Hanmer. They needed the staff and volunteer backpackers at the Forest Camp to help them test their new activity prior to actually putting it in place for customers. Seemed pretty straightforward at the time.

In an Amazing Race style, we were meant to decipher our first clue which would send us to a new location and a new clue, continuing the game until we had found all the clues and completed all the challenges. I happened to take it a step further. On the first clue, we had to head down to the stream at the back of the camp, me – in my flip flops – deciding to running down the steep hill to get to the stream rather than head around the corner to take a more gradual route. All was going fine until I hit the bottom of the hill and slipped on some mud – I fell forward and banged my knee. After a quick look down, I realized I had torn my leggings and had mud all over. Perfect.

I continued with the activity, running all around the forest and eventually back to the camp, forgetting about my incident with my knee until someone pointed it out with a clever line such as “oh – look at your knee.” I looked down a second time and immediately waved off their worries – there was only a minor amount of blood – most of the mess was a gapping hole in my leggings and caked on mud. There was barely any pain so I continued to conclude that I had most likely jus t grazed myself. I figured I’d finish the activity and then clean up once done. And so I did.

Nearly three hours after the incident, I walked home, a smile on my face at the absurdity of the challenges we had to complete. Once inside, I figured it was time to clean the mud off my knees and assess the damage. In pulling off my leggings, I quickly realized that I hadn’t simply grazed my knee as I had first thought. Somehow I had cut open a chunk of flesh and it now hung off my shin like a flap. Inside the wound was incredibly dirty, muddled with pieces of rock, mud and plant material. I knew it needed stitches and I knew I needed it cleaned, but I didn’t know much more than that. So I called Sandy, the Forest Camp’s Assistant Manager, to come help me out.

As Sandy also lived at the camp with her husband, it didn’t take long for her to arrive. Immediately I knew I had made the right choice. Having worked with the New Zealand ambulance service, Sandy took charge of the situation right away. I was in good hands.

Most of the dirt and debris at this point was so well ingrained into the wound that the only way Sandy and I could figure out how to clean it was to run a bath and soak the wound so that it would soften enough to brush the foreign material away. The only reason we were opting to do it ourselves was because the medical centre was closed for the day and our only other point of medical contact was to phone 111 for emergency services. This was hardly an emergency. I would have to clean it as best I could, bandage it and go to the medical centre first thing in the morning. Nothing like living in a small town.

And so we soaked the wound. Pretty soon things started to break loose and float away, making me feel more confident that things would be okay. The grayish looking skin on the inside of the wound was worrying me a bit though. But there was nothing I could do until the morning. Once Sandy and I determined there was nothing more we could clear from the wound, I hopped out of the bath and she bandaged me up. Surprisingly, I still felt minimal pain from everything that had happened. I only hoped things would stay that way so I could get some sleep.

The following morning I hobbled my way across the camp to the office. It was to be one of our busiest days at the camp and I didn’t want to sit at home being useless while the medical centre had yet to open. And so I sat in reception with my leg propped up as I answered phones so Sandy and her husband, Graeme, ran around organizing school groups to leave so that the new ones could arrive. Once the medical centre opened, I gave them a ring to see when I could come in – I didn’t see any sense in just showing up only to have to sit and wait hours when I could help out a bit longer at the camp. The receptionist checked the schedule and offered me an appointment at either 9:20 a.m. or 3:00 p.m. I am not even sure why she would have thought I would take the later one as I had already explained to her my situation. So 9:20 a.m. it was.

Eventually it was time to go and Graeme drove me down to the medical centre and dropped me off. I checked in and as I was sitting in the waiting room to be called, the receptionist came to me to inform me that because of my situation, the appointment I was booked in for was too short (10 minutes) and she was afraid that there wouldn’t be enough time to do the stitches and such. Would it be possible for me to come back later in the afternoon?

I think I sat there with my gapping open at her question as how was I supposed to answer that? An open wound (surely infected by this point) needed to be tended to on my leg and I was being asked if I could come back later as they were too busy to see me right away. Huh. Well I told her in the best way I could that there wasn’t really anywhere else I could be – or had to be – until I got my leg fixed. Her booking me in for 9:20 a.m. when apparently there wasn’t enough time to do what needed to be done wasn’t really my problem. And so she went back to confer with the doctors again.

In the meantime a doctor came out who recognized me from working on Robin Hood way-back-when together. We said our how-do-you-dos and then she got down to the business of asking me what had happened. I told her and then she promptly grabbed a hold of the top bit of my bandage and pulled it back to see the wound (ripping open everything again and causing me to gasp in pain), to which I kindly asked what she was doing and she replied that she just wanted to see what it looked like. Had she asked me that beforehand, I would have informed her that the wound was shaped in such a way that the best way to “look at it” would be to peel back the bottom part of the bandage, not the top as she did, in order to not disturb the flap of flesh.

She eventually went away and I was just about getting my heart rate back to normal from the doctor carelessly pulling back the bandage, when a nurse came out to inform me that they could, in fact, see me now. Perfect. As I hobbled into the medical room, the nurse told me she was a student nurse and would be learning from her experiences at the medical centre. I figured she was bubbling with excitement at the potential of what my wound could teach her.

I was relieved to find that Sharon would be seeing me as she is a friend of Steve and Lynne’s (the camp managers) and I had gotten to know her over the past few months and found her to be really easy to get along with. That and she has had many years experience working down in Stewart Island in really remote areas where though she is a nurse, had to make some very tough decisions. I figured I had lucked out and was with the best person I could be with to get me fixed up.

Sharon asked me to remove my own bandage (as opposed to ripping it off like the other doctor had done) and proceeded to ask me what had happened. By the time I had fully removed everything, she had calculated that it was now 16hrs since it had happened. Immediately the three of us could see the effects my delayed action in getting things fixed had caused with the wound. It sat there all puffy and sick-looking, bits already on the grey side. And when Sharon pulled back the flap of skin to inspect the inside, it was clear that things were still quite dirty.

Things went relatively quickly after that. Sharon injected some local anesthetic to the area and proceeded to discuss with the student nurse how she was going to go about fixing the wound. Up until that point I was doing fine with everything, but the descriptive talk combined with the feeling of Sharon scrubbing out my wound was a little much. I put in my iPod and focused on breathing.

Time slipped on and before I knew it, Sharon was yelling at me over my iPod music that they were done. I took my headphones out and sat up. there sat my leg with the wound all nicely stitched. It didn’t look near as bad as what I thought it wound. Five stitches Sharon told me. They couldn’t close up the top bit of the wound as the skin was too thin, so Steri-strips would have to do. In no time at all I was bandaged up again and sent out the door.

The rest of the day I spent lying on the couch, counting the hours away as I occasionally hobbled around the house. Time passed as I took nap after nap, unable to concentrate on anything for more than half an hour. It was okay, but I was crossing my fingers my leg would heal up soon. I hated the fact that I was limited from doing what I wanted to do, but grateful that the next few days I was scheduled off anyway.

Days ticked by and things slowly started to improve. I found myself hobbling less and being able to take showers with my leg in the water (initially I could only have baths with my leg straight up in the air to avoid the wound getting wet). Everything revolved around my doctor’s appointments. The first one I went to Sharon discovered that the infection had spread further than she would have liked – my five days of antibiotics turned into ten. The second appointment was a dressing change and the third was to allow me to remove the bandage permanently. But the date of stitches removal was being pushed back further and further.

Finally, after two weeks to the day since being injured, I was able to head to the medical centre and have Sharon pronounce the words that were music to my ears. I was able to have the stitches removed. That meant I could run again. It meant I could stop thinking about it. It meant a return to normal life.

Sort of. Sharon provided me with mini-bandages to just put over top of the wound area to protect it while it continued healing. The bit that Sharon was unable to stitch closed had pulled back and died off (as she had initially thought would happen) so now the new skin was still trying to form and any excess stress to the area could cause more damage. I didn’t want that so I gladly took the bandages.

The other day I went to change the bandage Sharon had put on, only to find that it was sticky across the whole thing. I didn’t realize that until I had pulled it back to find that the bandage had taken the top layer of half the wound with it. Bummer. Apparently with the bandage on, the skin had soften enough while showering and going about my day to allow it to break free and stick to the bandage itself. Underneath was essentially pussy goop that my body was fighting off. Perfect. So I’m back to cleaning wounds again. Good old salt water and tender loving care.

So now that the stitches are out and though the wound is still healing, I figure it's good that the whole injury has inspired me for something greater. Starting today I have begun training for a full marathon. Not sure which one or when, but I've started a new goal and it feels fabulous. As far as the wound I figure with everything that's gone on, at least the scar should be good.