My Red Badge of Courage

I swerved too hard on a gravel-filled road while cycling on a new route home just now. A driver in his white suburban beside me and a lady pruning the plants in her house came out to see if I was ok. The whole of my sole was sticky because there was so much blood oozing out (Man, if I'd donated that blood).

Then I went home and dripped blood in the living room and on my other slipper because I needed the first-aid box from Dean III. Figuring out that I totally shouldn't use the kitchen scissors to cut that flap of heel off, I asked Max for a pair of scissors. Thank God he had one, and he worked in a veterinary before, so he helped me pry open the remaining bits of skin that had gravel stuck inside. He cut them and all the while, the forceps and the blade of his thick scissors dug and scraped against my wound. And that was after hydrogen peroxide was applied. Double ouch. And let's skip the part concerning my suppressed and constipated reactions to the cutting, bleeding and digging.

>>> I'm leaving my wound to dry and it's perpetually glazed with pus-yellow plasma that trickles down my sole. But thank God I didn't have to dig out the gravel like I did when I was 15 (a large part of the skin on the ball of the SAME foot came out because I was too vigorously playing mess games on the road). Thanks Max (U DA MAN). And I'll walk as little as possible and cycle as much as possible. I should be fit for hiking Picacho Peak on Saturday morning though.

I like to think that my mum will be proud of me when I tell her about it, though in reality, she'll probably get worried and chide me.