Choppa Choppa Choppa

Well, my time came once again. Time to injure myself.... ha ha. This time it was a good one.

After we left Santiago, we went to Siete Tazas, a series of waterfalls halfway to Pucon. We camped there and the boys had an epic ascent from the valley above an unrunnable unportagable rapid. They had to hike back in the next morning to get their boats out, and it took quite a while. But they´re all ok, and everything´s good.
It was beautiful there.



We left Siete Tazas early to avoid paying the park fees, and were off to Pucon, with 7 people crammed into a pickup truck. With 7 people´s bags, 3 kayaks, and one riverboard all in the back. It was tight.

We stopped for lunch around 3... and filled up the truck at a gas station. We were making cheese and avocado sandwiches. I started cutting the paltas (avocados). To get the pits out, you hit them with the knife to sink it a bit, then twist and pull the pit out. I was working with Ben´s new Gerber Diesel (we´ve been talking about the Diesel and its superiority this whole trip) which is pretty much the sharpest thing I´ve ever seen. I hit the pit with the knife.... it went through the pit, through the palta, and through my finger.
It instantly started bleeding everywhere, and I knew it was pretty bad. I ran into the bathroom... for some reason my logic was to bleed in the sink... yelling "I just cut my finger really bad! It´s really bad!" all the way to the bathroom.
I got the bleeding to stop after like 5 minutes and Andy cleaned it and steri stripped it and we bandaged it up. Pucon was 3 hours away... so we went.
We got into Pucon around 6 and I immediately went to the emergency room with Emily. They took off the steri strips off and looked at it and took me into another room. They laid me down and put my hand on a metal table. They numbed it.... num num num.. ha ha. ... which hurt pretty bad. Once numbed.... num num num... ha ha... he opened it up and cleaned it. I couldn´t see what was going on really. He told Emily that I had cut an artery and that we should look. I looked up only to see blood spurting everywhere. Aaah. I laid back down.
The doctor stitched up the artery and realigned the nerve so that it could heal back together. Then he stitched the wound on the outside. 5 stitches. Not so bad.


10 days total. 5 days in the splint, then 5 more days till the stitches could come out. No getting it wet for 5 days. Bah. There went all my whitewater plans in Pucon.

So... 5 days later, I took it out of the splint and it looks pretty good. It feels relatively fine, besides the shooting nerve damage pain. That´s the worst part. It goes from weird tingly to shooting pain without notice. For the most part I have all my movement back, just some of it is excrutiatingly painful. Yay. Hopefully this will greatly improve every day.

Choppa choppa choppa. The finger will survive.