the day i cut my leg with a chainsaw...

writing about my traumatic eye experience made me remember my yet-to-be-told chainsaw story. yes, you read that correctly, chainsaw. my parents decided to buy seventy-five acres of forest about three years ago, and six months later decided to start clearing the land and building the guesthouse. now, if you've met my dad you would know his theory on hiring people to do things for you goes something like "hire help? that's why you have kids!" and when that isn't enough, "borrow your brother's kids!" and so, the whole family cohorted to start clearing the land.

it's right before fourth of july weekend, sweltering hot in the houston heat and humidity, i'm using the chainsaw to cut down little, i mean smaller-than-the-width-of-my-arm, trees that are in the way of the driveway... this is all going down in truly rustic fushion: i'm wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a bandana... protective gear? what's that? no, i am not using protective gear... i'm cutting through a small pine when the chainsaw hits a knot, causing it to jump back in the direction of my left knee... the chainsaw turns off, i don't feel anything, i think to myself 'did i just cut my leg with the chainsaw...??' i put the chainsaw on the ground, look down at my knee and begin to scream... all i see is blood soaked jeans, i definitively feel something now... my younger cousin who had seen the whole thing about fifteen feet away from me is crying in horror, i'm grasping at my knee, everyone is yelling, my sister ties a bandanna around my knee and my dad who is about 900 feet away from me, all the way down the driveway, is running towards me, cursing why he let me use a chainsaw, he falls, continues to run.... he's so upset that he's red and hitting his legs with his fists, they get me in the car.... the hospital happens to be like thirty minutes away... my dad is driving like a madman with my uncle in tandem... my dad is stopping at red lights and my uncle is honking at him, yelling out the window in farsi "why are you stopping!!!" (try reading that 'Vy are you e-stopping' - hilarious)... he stops stopping at the red lights... all the while one of our friends who we were supposed to meet up later with is calling, my sister answers the phone and yells at him a short, "Ruben, Ary just cut her leg with a chainsaw" and hangs up... poor kid...

we finally make it to the hospital, there are no patients there, the triage nurse asks what happened.. (ummm just cut my leg with a chainsaw)... she makes small talk... "guess you can't be a knee model now"... she laughs... (listen lady, i'm bleeding)... she asks me what my pain is on a scale from one to ten (really?? an eleven maybe??)... they take me back to a bed and leave me with a gown... the nurse tells me to change... (oh, ok i'll just take off my boots and jeans by myself...) my mother comes back to help me... pain killers... some other stuff...local anesthesia... they ask me if i can still feel this [pokes knee]... yes, i can still feel that... more injections... 'can you feel this?' [poke]... uh, yea, yea i can... more injections.. [poke]... I CAN STILL FEEL IT! YOU CAN INJECT THE WHOLE BOTTLE, THANKS! i finally can't feel my knee... they clean my knee out (i almost pass out)... luckily my jeans stopped the chainsaw, causing it to bounce of my patella and preventing major damage... cut away burned tissue... close up my knee... a straight knee brace and crutches for two months, painkillers, no physical activity for one year... i finally get to go home...

the rest of the healing process was rather lackluster... i got left at home for the rest of the summer while everyone else was building (the things you have to go through in my family to get out of work!)... luckily, nearly three years later my knee is fully functional...  and if it wasn't for a small scar on my knee and my residual fear of all power tools, you would never know of my encounter with the chainsaw... people actually seem disappointed when i tell them about the incident and then i show them my scar - they cut away all the dead and burned tissue, pulled it all together in a little line on my knee, and all i have to show for it is a five inch scar - well i'm sorry, people, that my scar isn't more impressive, next time i'll ask for a cooler one...

how not to tell your patient they may or may not have eye cancer...

so today was fun. during clinical skills we were using our opthalmascopes on our partners, practicing checking eyes, when my partner finds a "black dot" on my left retina... looks again... yes, the black spot is still there. we call over our overseeing physicians, he looks into my eye, looks at me, asks when the last time i had my eyes checked were (7 months ago), asks if this black dot has always been there (ummm... no?), tells me "in all my forty two years of practice I have never seen this before. could be melanoma. you should see a specialist"... at this point i'm in shock, considering crying, remembering i don't have eye insurance, i joke - pretending i'm not completely frightened... he realizes maybe he should not have thrown out that diagnosis, "oh don't worry it's probably nothing, i mean i've never seen it, and you don't want to mess around with those kinds of things.... something, something.... melanoma... something, something... i would just get that checked out as soon as possible if i were you".... i start crying... my classmates attempt to comfort me... and now i'm expected to go back to class and pretend like i'm not dying from cancer...

drama takes over: frantically googling black spots on retina, calls mom in hysterics, [I PROBABLY HAVE CANCER], tries to buy eye insurance, leaves class, makes an appointment with the student health center, [I'M GOING TO BE BLIND], tries to make an appointment with the specialist (cannot - i have to go in to make an appointment), [HOW AM I GOING TO BE A BLIND DOCTOR], friend comforts and reminds that the spot is only in the left eye,  [HOW AM I GOING TO BE A ONE-EYED DOCTOR], friend continues to comfort, [I'LL PROBABLY HAVE TO USE A MONOCLE], decide i should not freak out until i actually see the specialist, return to class, sit in class in a pool of self-pity completely distracted...

i decide i can't wait for my scheduled student health center appointment at 3pm and leave school since i can't pay attention anyway and head over to the student health center - i was hoping someone there would tell me it was nothing and i wouldn't have to go see the specialist, but that wasn't the case. they take me as a walk in, my blood pressure is 145/98, the nurse asks me if i ran there (no. no, i did not.) the nurse begins to do a vision test on me. she covers my left (spotted) eye, asks me to read the chart with my right eye... letters... then she asks me to read the chart with just my left eye... it's fuzzy (probably because it has just been closed), i can't focus, i convince myself i have been losing my vision this whole time and i'm just now realizing it so i start crying again, the lady is asking me to read the letters, i say some... she writes down my vision as right eye: 20/25; left eye: 20/80. the doctor sees me, tells me he is not sure what the spot is, and tells me to go to the specialist...

i drive to the specialist office, tell them my story, tell them i was referred... they tell me they can make an appointment for me next wednesday...  i start crying again, how am i supposed to do anything (like study) when i'm worried that i have cancer in my left eye? now, i hate crying in front of people, i hate that i can't control it and hate being vulnerable, so i don't even feel bad that my tears worked in my advantage for once... she feels sorry for me, tries to make me laugh, and says she will squeeze me in.

while i sit in the waiting room, i begin to realize i'm the only one there under the age of 70 - of course, i would have old people problems.... they squeeze me in, dilate my eyes, take pictures of my retina... the doctor comes in and tells me i have two benign pigmentation tumors (like a freckle) called choroidal nevus on my left retina, one is on my optic nerve the other is to the side... says it could develop into malignant melanoma but its rare and i will just have to keep an eye on them.... (get it? keep an eye on them... haha jk, that wasn't actually a joke) anyway, three hundred dollars later, crisis averted, for now... 

auld lang syne

so as it turns out, blogging faced the same fate as all of my other miserable journals - tossed aside until stumbled upon quite some time later... i can't tell you how many old journal/diaries of mine i have found recently, only to open them up and read the embarrassing banter of a younger self... my most recent find: journal of my fourteen year old self after moving to brazil... the pages adorned with "why do my parents hate me... i hate my parents... life seems so pointless right now... etc".... i wanted to die. unlike the normal half written attempt of a journal i normally find laden with "so this time i'll really write," (only to succumb to my own disinterest and reconfirm the same promise six months later) this journal was fully written in, cover to cover. it was so embarrassing i couldn't even bring myself to read full entries. there is nothing worse than finding an old journal and reading the ridiculous things i decided to write about during that time... when i was probably about nine i remember thinking i would start keeping a real journal, but i would write it as if someone, someday was going to read it... because for some reason i thought i was going to be like anne frank (minus the whole religious persecution and all that jazz)... so basically just a journal people would want to read in the future... so basically nothing like anne frank, at all.

over christmas break i ended up, to my dismay, finding three old journals while we were cleaning out old storage containers, and let me tell you, i was apparently a deeply emotional child... needless to say, all of the journals found their way to a burning pile of trash... 

since it is a new year, for old times' sake,  it only seems appropriate to give this another shot... "this time i'll really write"... 

happy new year! year 2012, you've got some big shoes to fill.

[photo by serend1p1tyx: those are not my feet]