Traumatic, no never mind. It wasn't that big of deal. Most of the trauma came as a result of my second fall on my wound but more about that later....
It started at 9:00 at night. When I moved into my apartment, one of the first things that I noticed that would need changed was my toilet seat. You know those cushy, yucky seats that only-people-over-65 have in America??? That is what I was looking at on my first day. And in Korea, your shower does not have a curtain or really any contained area, so water is bound to get on this toilet seat. You can imagine the unpleasantness...
Anyways, it was 9:00 and I had just gotten my first pay check. "I'm going to go to Home Plus to get a new toilet seat!" I declared. I have a bike. I looooove my bike. I spent many-a-minutes on the first night I got it scrubbing it into cleanliness and it's original color. I bought it for cheap. 40,000 won to be exact. I really do love my bike. It has cut my time in half to get to downtown Chilgok.
To be honest I probably need to start with my first bike accident.... My first one was not severe. I was riding on the sidewalk, because lets face it....riding on the streets in Korea is a death wish. I thought that a group of middle school girls had seen me because they were drifting to the side of the sidewalk. Last minute they fanned out and I had to make a decision. Human girls, or me run my leg into a cement wall. The girls were fine. My leg was scrapped. Oh well.
But because of this event, I have hated the few blocks of very narrow sidewalks on my way to Home Plus and downtown. Hence why, after purchasing a new toilet seat and putting it in the front of my basket, I made the decision to ride on the street for these few blocks.
Before going on the street I didn't see any cars, but about half way through the first block, I could hear some behind me. Then panic set in..."OH CRAP! I don't have any reflectors on my bike! Can they see me???" I decided the best option was to cut back onto the sidewalk as it ramped back down. I was going quite fast when I did this and did not have the appropriate angle to jump the 1 inch manufactures mistake, and just wiped out! My toilet seat went flying! ahaha!
I didn't even assess my wounds. A very nice elderly Korean couple who had witnessed my wipe out picked up my toilet seat from the middle of the road and placed it back into my basket as I set my bike up. Surprisingly they knew some English and asked if I was okay and told me to, "take care". I can only imagine what was going through their minds... I didn't look down. I didn't look down until I was at home and realized that I had blood running down my leg. Of course the wound was on my surgical knee and over my very large keyloid scar. I also had a puncture on one of my heals. But considering the fall, I was very lucky! I have no idea how I saved my hands from damage!
I did my best to slightly clean it up, and luckily (because I am sooooo old and motherly) I brought some neosporin from home. The next day, I went to the nurses office and she cleaned it out again. This time by scrubbing it with an orange goo infested swab. Extreme fun....
The real drama of this toilet seat battle wound started on the weekend, when I was in Andong. In Korea, they outline the normal parts of the side walks with very slick polished marble or something. I find it stupid in every way. As it was raining and I was wearing flip flops (duh), I hit that part of the sidewalk on a ramp and my left leg went out in front of me which caused all of my weight to go directly on my hurt knee! You know when something is so painful that you can't even scream? Yup, that was this moment... Not only did I have a scrape on my knee, but I'm pretty sure it was bruised like crazy and since it is my surgical knee, I'm guessing it was worse off than my other knee would have been!
To soften this pain, I drank soju. More soju than was probably necessary ..I looked down at one point and noticed my jeans were quite soaked with blood...whoops! Soju helped!
The next day I looked at it and it was way worse. I showed the nurse at school and it was infected. At one point during the week I was in the nurses room and she was trying to clean the wound (by rubbing the orange goo infested swab of course) while kids were watching tears run down my face. I was told, "If the kids can do it so can you Marie! " I'm sure though that these kids weren't dealing with a surgical knee that was bruised like it had never been bruised before! AHHH! I shudder thinking about this.
Needless to say my knee wound was all I could think about for at least a week. What am I going to wear? I had to keep it open. Will these people run into it on this extremely packed bus? Oh the drama.
I hope that was my last bike accident... :)
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