Watching the IV Drip

No longer a teenager; No longer invincible.

On a normal weekend, I would have spent the three days traveling. Instead, I spent last weekend + 2 days in the trusted hands of Costa Rican health care.

Facing a busy next week, the Brandon of last week decided to default on the usual three-day trip to someplace exotic and instead get some major work done at home, with a half-day interlude spent hiking at the nearby Braulio Carrillo National Park.

I did well on Friday, doing enough research to get ready for Saturday’s hike and enough facebooking to get ready for Sunday’s schoolwork. My (now indispensably dear) friend Rachna and I got on the bus in San José and off the bus at a ranger station amidst the 184 square miles of dense rainforest that is Braulio Carrillo National Park. We hiked the longer path first, saw a huge stick bug , mistook an enormous tree for a cement wall , and marveled at the water under the bridge . But I’ll spare you the water under the bridge.

At about 10:30 AM, we returned to the ranger station to eat meat sandwiches for lunch. Aside from the ranger who opened the gate for us, we had not seen another soul during the entire trip. All through Meat Sandwiches, the ranger station seemed empty. We embarked on the day’s second hike.

A few hundred feet in, Rachna spied a small brown snake on the ground . I had almost stepped on it (good thing I didn’t, huh?). It was brown, a little over a foot long, with a square-ish head and a diamond pattern on its back . It bore striking resemblance to the (harmless, nontoxic, quite gentle) baby Boa we held on last week’s field trip. As I bent closer to get a better picture of my new friend, he managed to bite me on the tip of my right-hand, third finger.

Let me tell you something about animal bites. They normally sting a little at first, but it’s mostly shock. Then they might start to bleed, and only later do they actually hurt.

But not in this case. In this case, I knew, before it even registered that I had been bitten, that something was terribly wrong. Immediately, unimaginable pain seared through my finger, radiating out from the tip, which was now a red and purple amoeba . I was too busy clutching and gasping at my pain riddled finger to notice the snake leave, citing "irreconcilable differences." It was bleeding quite well from a single small hole at the tip. Blood is nothing new to me, as I have weak skin, but the way this bleeding was rather worrisome. The blood was slimy. It wasn’t the clean flow of a fresh wound, nor was it the thickening ooze of a successfully forming clot. It was slimy. I had never before seen my blood behave this way. This (and the unending pain and the slowly growing mass of purple I can only imagine was venom) worried me, and worried me greatly. I started to shake and cringe from all that worry and pain.

It was at this point that Rachna probably saved my life.

People in pain do incredible things. Some have revolutionary insights. Some gain unflinching determination. And some are just really dumb.

I am most certainly really dumb. Especially in extreme pain.

For you see, my immediate, number one priority after having received a neuron-crippling injection of toxin, was to finish out the 1.5 mile loop we were hiking (mind over matter!). Rachna protested, but I was adamant. My main argument was a strong one: “Think of all the waterfalls we might be missing!” But Rachna would not budge. I was close to leaving her and walking the rest of the trail alone, envenomed finger and all.

However, Rachna: “We’ll go to the ranger station to get a bandaid, then come back to look for waterfalls, ok?”

I chewed my lip (presumably less a product of thinking and more a product of the seething hellstorm raining fury and fire on my finger). “Ok,” I gave in.

I don’t remember the walk back.

The park ranger looked at the wound, looked at the pictures of the snake, and demanded we go immediately to the hospital. He didn’t have a car, so he flagged down a recently arrived Tico and his family, explained to him what are the haps, and soon the four of us were speeding away in his car, leaving his wife and daughter alone in the Braulio Carrillo National Parking lot. We stopped at a nearby ranger station, where I was transferred to a rangermobile. Continuing our journey, we ran into a police officer issuing someone a ticket. After a few seconds (about 30) of explaining our situation, she dropped all charges on the motorist and joined our posse as the lights and sirens to clear traffic.

Did you get that? The part about me having a police escort? I like that part. All the while, though, I was moaning in pain in the back seat watching the purple spot stretch down my finger . Rather worrisomely, my entire arm had started to hurt.

Arriving at the Guápiles Hospital, I answered a long and repetitive series of questions regarding the incident, past medical history, any allergies to medicine, any preferred form of recovery, any religious qualms against certain forms of recovery, and let me see those pictures again? I was then told that I was bitten by a terciopelo (Fer-de-Lance in English), one of the most venomous and dangerous snakes of Costa Rica. I was lucky on a number of counts, including that it was not fully grown. Although I doubt I would have gotten as close if it were.

I then had the NICEST conversation with the doctor. He said I probably would have to stay in the hospital for up to eight days. I laughed at his joke, but explained how that wasn’t possible, as I had school on Monday. He responded that that was fine, I could leave early, but I might die. I laughed a little, but he did not laugh back (do you know how disconcerting that was?). I then realized that he was absolutely serious. My thoughts of returning to see the waterfalls vanished. It was at this moment that I realized how bad my situation was. I told him 8 days would be fine, and I was ready to comply with whatever the doctors needed. I also told him I was in a lot of pain. He laughed at me, and said, “Wait 2-3 hours, it gets much worse.”

The doctor then outlined the important steps of my treatment:
1. Antivenom (So I don’t end up like this kid.)
2. Antibiotics (The largest danger is the fact that snakes don’t regularly brush their teeth.)
3. Internal bleeding control (As I noted earlier, my blood was not coagulating correctly. They were very worried about me bruising my organs to death.)
4. Kidneys (Basically, the venom works by killing and decomposing any proteins and tissues it touches, especially muscle. This rot is rather toxic to the kidneys, and has to be monitored. Hello pee-in-a-cup.)
5. Prevention (No more snake charming.)

They then threw me on a bed, stuck me with 5 needles and an IV , and left me to writhe in pain, alone . My finger steadily grew uglier . The worst pain came when, in 3 hours (thank you, doctor), they decided to clean my wound. The pain was unimaginable. Pain enough to drop my pulse to 45, drop my blood pressure to 90 over 50, turn my already pale skin transparent, and cause me to sweat profusely from every pore. I have never felt such pain. If giving birth hurts this much, I cannot imagine anyone desiring more than one child. My finger felt as though it were being continuously held under a strongly directed flame. Nothing I did alleviated the pain, and it struck without warning. The pain was too intense to even scream. All I could was focus all my attention on breathing. The pain caused me to shake, to moan, to clench, to squirm, and to cry. But the pain wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was the terror. No one would tell me my condition. No one would even tell me what was in the countless bags of IV they kept pushing through my arm. I didn’t know how long I would be in the hospital, if I would lose my finger/hand/arm, or even if I would lose my life. And with this fear, you’re all alone. I knew no one in the emergency room, where they allow you no visitors and everyone speaks a different language and you can’t even change clothes yourself.

At about 20:00, Rachna and I took an ambulance ride (lights but no siren) from Guápiles to San José, what should have been an hour and a half drive. We made it in about 45 minutes.

That first night at the hospital, I spent in the emergency room among people with cases that made my snake bite look prissy (car wrecks, power tools, and nearly complete immobility). There were not enough beds, and I had to sleep on the couch, using my spare clothes as a pillow . I woke up to a hearty breakfast of cheese sandwich . The next day, I befriended a retired wrestler/Vietnam vet/bodyguard/bounty hunter/Harley Davidson enthusiast with a greatly inflamed spider bite. I acted as his translator. He called me Son.

I was also given numerous more injections, IV bags and urine tests. The boredom started to get to me. As I had no bed, I had to sit on the couch with nothing to do but feel pain. I took a lot of naps.

Eventually, I was given my own bed in a hallway on the second floor and heavy doses of the pain-killer, Tramal. Due to the Tramal, however, I hallucinated quite profusely. One such hallucination was that my head, feet, torso, and hands were different countries spread throughout the globe, and my legs and arms were telephone lines connecting those countries. Then my hands turned into little birdies resting on those telephone lines. Hey, it was weird, but it was better than the incessant and unbearable pain.

On Sunday, a doctor met with me and told me that the necrosis was too extensive, and they would have to remove the tip of my finger. I was to meet with the reconstructive surgeon the next day, who was to plan the operation. I tried to think of it like a celebrity getting a nose job, but I was still going to miss my fingertip.

UNTIL, good news! The reconstructuve surgeon said my finger should heal without surgery! He said this after stabbing at it with a scalpel. At the time, I was not happy to hear this, because I was too busy forcing myself to remain conscious despite the flashflood of pain. I was a little happier later. I celebrated with a nap. My finger was looking better, too .

The other REALLY GOOD bit of news was that, instead of having to stay until Thursday or Friday, I was able to go home Tuesday afternoon! They switched me to an oral antibiotic, and I have a check-up next Tuesday. I have to keep my right arm elevated, wash my finger twice a day, and I can’t really use it for anything. I have been practicing one handed typing:

Me: i will soon bbe the masyer of one ganded typing!!1
Dad: Do you want to videochat once Mom gets here?
Me: that would e besy, ys

It appears the worst is verifiably over, and I have certainly learned my lesson. My guardian angel, if he has not yet opted for early retirement, is most certainly miffed.

And most importantly, thank you to all, near and far, who have helped me through this.

Big hug ?