In the middle of last night around 3:30 a.m., I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep. The nagging thought I had was this...we've subjected our crew to 4 full days of physical labor with a fifth to come and sixth if we let it and we were pretty banged up. I talked to Buddy this morning about my uneasiness and we decided to start "winding things down." Y'know, finish out the 2 jobs we had and do our best to help out Fabian, a man who was running a Boxing Club for at risk boys and girls and lost his Boxing Club to the wildfires. I figured our bodies couldn't take much more and this would be a good way to finish off a week doing disaster relief work.
As is the case with most disaster relief work, things don't always (or usually) go the way you hoped or planned. Being flexible and making decisions on the fly are part of the deal. The Boxing Club is a job that required taking sheet metal (the walls) and then folding them up and dragging them to the front of the property. The building was big so there were lots of nails, screws, and metal.
Well, as I drove up to the site after lunch, Rick was driving Buddy's truck with Buddy in the passenger side. Strange, something wasn't right. Turns out Buddy stepped on a rusty screw that "went down to the bone." Bad. Very bad. I followed Rick back to the church building to work on Buddy. We have the capacity & supplies to handle most minor medical emergencies, and today was no exception.
Rick irrigated the puncture wound and we watched Buddy squirm and say publicly "I'm scared like a little girl." Graciously, we anesthetized him. After the anesthesia took effect (1 year old expired Lidocaine....again) Rick probed the wound to see if he could feel any metal fragments. No luck. We irrigated the wound even more with saline and betadine and wrapped it up.
I sent Krista off to the pharmacy to get some pain pills, antibiotic pills, and an antibiotic injection which she kindly administered in his backside. Needless to say, Sheila was on hand (naturally) to document the drama.
Given that our commander in chief was now on doctor's orders to stay off his feet while we watched for worsening symptoms and our injuries continuing to mount, I called our crew and told them to stop working because we were done. When the crew arrived, everyone checked their shoe/boot soles and Brian found 6 rusty nails/screws embedded in his boot.
Change of plans. We decided to come home tomorrow instead of Saturday as our bodies are done and Rick and I are not interested in seeing what injuries another work day would bring.
Pray for safe travels. Looking forward to being home.
