I hate being injured. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen that often, but about ten days or so ago, I did something really strange to my leg. A storm came up as I was walking from the office to the house. I don’t care if I get wet, but I had some papers in my hand so I started running up the steep path to our house. I do it all the time, but this time something popped in the calf of my leg. It felt like someone punched me or something. I still don’t know what happened, but I had to get someone to rescue the papers and bring me a big stick to lean on so I could hobble my way to the house.

I had an important visitor the next day whom I was going to escort all over the farms. In the morning I could still put no weight on the leg nor flex my foot, so I had a driver take me to pick up the visitor. I made a valiant effort, but after about ten steps, I had to let someone else escort him inside the first plantation. I got home as soon as I could, turned over tour duties to others, and retreated to a couch to attempt not to move for a while.

By the next night it was a little better, and we sat in a hot spring for a while. That helped.

Now after about ten days, it is almost okay, but it still twinges, which tells me I better not go running for a while. Thankfully, it has recovered enough so that I no longer am in danger of country remedies. We have a lot of workers, and they are very concerned if I get sick (very rare) or injured (rarer yet). They want to help, but their help is a bit scary. All that most of the workers know how to treat is horses and cows, and since I am nearly the same size in their eyes, the suggestions for remedies sounded frighteningly similar.

Why is it that anytime someone suggests a cure around here, they start by saying that it will really hurt a lot, or taste horrible, or in this case burn like fire, but then it will really help, too! What I gathered was that some nurse or possibly a pharmacist would take a huge needle and inject a muscle relaxant into my butt. This does not sound good. After the agony was over, the muscle would be fine and I could go about my business, after of course visiting the dentist to fix all my teeth because I had clenched them so hard. I bet the pharmacist does veterinary work on the side. Maybe dental work too.

Just to be on the safe side, I have been working at walking as normally as I can. You never know, if they get the idea I will never walk and run normally again, they might suggest I be put down.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 10:28 am and is filed under cultural adaptation, culture, doctor, finca, horses, injury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.