Throwing Up & Maid Drama

I had the most horrible night! I suddenly woke up at 3am for some reason and never fell back asleep; I fell asleep at 6:45 and have to wake up at 7 so I’m not even going to count that. I just couldn’t fall asleep for the life of me, so I laid in bed restless for all of those hours. I was so tired the whole day because of it too. Horrible.

Orthopedic surgery was very entertaining today. The first operation required fixing the tendons in a lady with stab wounds all over her body allegedly from her boyfriend. She had wounds on her wrist and palm that were operated on today, and then got stitches removed from the wounds on her thigh, breast and arm. I can’t imagine how painful the palm is going to be during the healing process; that is most certainly a defense wound. She was put into a cast that covered almost all of her fingers so that they could heal properly and still function correctly. If she had full movement, it would have been pointless for the tendon repair surgery. The second surgery Miles actually scrubbed scrubbed in for. It was an ankle reconstruction. It was really interesting to watch and he had fun as well. He got to drill screws into the bone to secure the placement, helped hold the skin and tendons back while the surgeons repaired things, etc. That was the last surgery we saw; sometimes it take hours to complete one operation, so in such cases we don’t get through very many a day. I get to scrub in and assist with surgeries tomorrow. I’m pretty excited! I hope I get to do a cool operation.

Later in the evening, Joan made “viennas” or hotdogs for dinner, and if you know me, you know how I feel about those. They were the longest hotdogs I have ever seen, and she gave me TWO of them! With eggs, bread and avocado. Talk about a South African meal. Anyways, I couldn’t not eat them, especially since she was sitting at the table with us. Ugh. I felt like gagging even seeing them on my plate. But, I had to try, so I poured a huge amount of chutney sauce (my options were mustard or chutney sauce—fabulous…) onto my plate to try my best and disguise the taste and smell as I attempted eating them. I was pretty proud of myself—I got through one of them without gagging too visibly, but still had a whole one more to eat. I took a deep breath, cut a piece off of the second hotdog, dipped it in chutney and put it in my mouth. As I bit into it, I was greeted by a hard something against my teeth and that was pretty much the end. Joan was talking to me during this time, and I nodded while I was trying not to let anything come out of my mouth, got around the corner, and booked it to the bathroom. I made it just in time to throw it all up. When I came back to the table, I couldn’t even be courteous and try to finish the second one.
I took a nice bath a couple hours later, and gave myself a lovely pedicure. I did my toes up and started on my nails, which I will finish another night. I am trying to do things to distract me and take up my time so that I don’t think about home too much. It’s worked pretty well so far. Joan and I had a nice conversation for a good while as well, and then we got ready for bed.

Earlier this week, I forgot to mention something that happened. While I was getting ready to go to dinner with the gang and Marion and Avril, I was looking through my suitcase for a particular top that was nowhere to be found. I ended up emptying my entire suitcase with no luck, and was baffled as to where it could be. I asked Joan if she had seen or washed it and asked Lauren if she remembers me wearing it here. I couldn’t remember when the last time I had seen it was. Neither Joan nor Lauren remembered ever seeing it, so I texted (or sms’ed as South Africans say) my host mom Zola from Durban asking her if I had forgotten the top, and her response left me jaw dropped. She told me yes, that Zodwa (our maid) told her that I gave it to her. First of all, I loved that top, and second of all, Zodwa spoke not one word of English, so how could that exchange have possibly gone down? Whenever I needed to talk to her, I had to tell one of the boys to translate it into Zulu for me and vice versa. She also did my laundry the night before I left and gave it all back to me the morning I was leaving, so I was frantically packing and assuming she gave me all of my clothes….apparently not. I was so angry!! I think I was most angry about the fact that she lied, and then just stole my shirt. I couldn’t believe it, and still can’t.