October 12, 2011

What happened to me this morning...

...was I was cut like a love so deep.

I went to Cogon Market early this morning like 7am+ with Keisha. So we rode a motorela to Cogon then we were dropped off at the part where motorelas are allowed, don't really know the exact address but I can walk you there and I'd know the way. We were walking to the big building to buy veggies at the second floor and as we passed by Antonio Ty there was this woman who I didn't even notice walking towards where I was coming from and she was carrying a white plastic bag which caught my knee and something sharp scratched me. I reacted to the pain and searched my knee for a scratch and saw a scraped part of the top of my left knee.
The epidermis was scraped clean and I saw my dermis. Yes, the white layer. But only for seconds as I saw droplets of blood slowly oozing out until it was flooding the cut, and like any other public government contracted work in the Philippines, the canal (cut) could not contain the water (blood) and it flowed onto the highway (leg). Imagine the sight of a female walking in a public area with blood dripping from her knees. LOL I didn't know what to do. Of course I did, but I was a bit disoriented, it was still early and I just woke up from only 4 hours of sleep and I felt like a zombie trying to act decent enough for market vendors to entertain and not be suspiciously looked on as a fresh produce thief. 

What happened was when me and Keisha both realized it was not a mere scratch, we had the same reaction. Shock. Yeah. We were staring into space and also seemingly trying to look for the woman with the white plastic bag with an unidentified sharp object inside. The truth is I was busy trying to feel the pain and reacting to it and didn't really care for the suspect because when I turned to look at her after 2 minutes, I think, of feeling, inspecting and being shocked she was almost disappearing around the corner. And I can't imagine myself running after her and showing her what she unintentionally did and she might just display the same shock me and Keisha had when we saw the cut with oozing and dripping blood. 

There were market guys around, I think at least 3 who was in the scene and they were hesitantly asking what really happened and they looked like they wanted to help but my shocked expression perhaps made them decide not to volunteer any assistance. This one guy who had the courage to approach us actually asked us questions and also offered answers, not that it really mattered, maybe just for rapport. And maybe I looked pitiful in that situation with a knee that's of oozing blood that he volunteered to wipe clean the dripping blood. I asked him if he had something to use to wipe with then he fumbled for his pockets and there was only a 50 peso bill that appeared in his palm so he crumpled it, bent down and wiped my leg with it. (In as much as I would love to detail out how this scene went on, my mind seems to put on emergency brakes and I can't move forward anymore. I still don't know how to react to it until now.)

Keisha had the sensibility to stop the whole thing. She reasoned out to him that money is dirty and it's an open wound. A logical explanation for someone who has grasped the meaning of common sense, but in that exact moment, I think the only person equipped with the usually uncommon Common Sense was Keisha. I was shocked for the second time when he did that, just within the span of 7 minutes, and I tell you it's harder to shake yourself out of it on the second time. 

The guy was finally in his normal state after satisfying his inner desires to wipe the blood off from a poor, pitiful, unsuspecting, disoriented and shocked female market goer who he thinks that her legs are great. And he actually told me this. Thank you, but Sir, your compliments won't absorb the blood and clean my legs and perhaps stitch my cut close - I would have loved to tell this to him if I was in the state that I am in right now earlier this morning. Instead, I asked him where I could buy bandaids and told me there's a Rose Pharmacy on the next block. I said my thanks and walked fast and not to waste any more blood on the streets. We got to the pharmacy and bought gauze, tape, cotton and betadine and like any other girl scout, I cleaned my wound with antiseptic and poured a bit more on the cut and covered it with gauze and finally securing it with a micopore tape. Things like this you don't forget even under unideal situations. Same with singing, dancing, swimming, driving and f******. 

What I learned after I went through all this on one early morning in a public market is that I'm still a girl scout. I can function under stress induced by shock and pain and now I am more eager to discover under what other circumstances I might be able to function in. Hmm. 
The first photo shows my emergency first aid application to cuts such as this one. And I'm so proud of it. LOL

All 3 shows the cut in different angles. You can see that it's deep. You can use your brains then to imagine how the ooze happened earlier and the dripping and the guy with the 50 peso bill...

Excuse the display of bad skin, my only excuse is that I have stopped taking pills and vitamins altogether which may have caused the deterioration of my skin quality. The bottom left photo looks like the cut is surrounded by light colored hair, but no. That's the cotton from the gauze. 

Summary of the story

I woke up at 7am, had breakfast, freshened up and headed to market to buy produce with Keisha. Several meters after getting off the motorela in Cogon, I bumped into a woman's plastic bag and got scratched and realized it's not a mere scratch but a deep cut. With what, I'll leave that to the people who were around in the scene to contemplate what could have been inside that plastic bag that was so sharp and gave me my first etched skin art, complete with pain and so much blood.

But you know what I think, I could be a ninja. Or maybe an assassin. Can't really decide which is which. Because I can withstand pain and blood and still walk a distance, act normal and perform firstaid on myself perfectly though with slight shaking of the hands. But maybe they won't take me. Takes so much for me to recover from being disoriented and shocked. Maybe there's an intensive training for that, I hope. 

2 comments:

NOEL said...

one have to learn in getting rid of "fear"... for one to be what you want to be...

NOEL said...

AGILITY AND VERSATILITY IS A MUST FOR ONE TO BE "IN IT" AT A GIVEN TIME AND PLACE...