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Ailments: Not for the Weak of Heart

Our helo plans for Dec 27 fell through due to morning skank, so it turned into mostly an inside day for me. Since nothing interesting really happened, I’ll outline my ailments for you.

Ailments. It’s impossible to not acquire them while doing field work, right? So I’ve decided to give a run-down of mine to date.

I mentioned a while back that I landed on the edge of a piece of plywood, catching it in my ribs. It’s feeling better now, although a day or two ago I felt like it was getting worse, probably from (characteristically) holding in my sneezes, starting the skidoos (pull-start, like a lawn mower), and struggling to push open the door to the orange hut which often sticks. These are the times when it most hurts. It also hurts when I sit up or lie down, but not as much as it used to. Nelia thinks I may have done something mildly nastier than bruising, like slightly separating the ribs, and I think she may be right.

I kicked my leg back for balance while skidooing, and kicked my calf right into the pointy tip of my ice axe. Big welt. I’ve since adopted a different ice axe transport strategy.

I have an unidentified bump on my left earlobe. Well, I’ve identified it, but I don’t know what’s causing it.

Several nights ago, I unintentionally poured hot water onto the back of my left hand. Luckily, as Rich K. pointed out, water boils up here at much lower temperatures than it does at sea level. The burn was minor, and hurt only briefly, and showed only as a thin red line on my skin the following day. Much stranger was another mark that appeared the same day. It appears I burned the wrist of my right hand, but I’ve no idea how. The burn showed up as a perfect bullseye: A solid white circle surrounded by a red circle, with a smaller, irregularly-shaped red blotch beside it. This is the first time I’ve blistered from a burn. The blister filled to the point of being obnoxious; it was probably about a centimeter high, and I’m not exaggerating. The poor bandaid didn’t know what was going on. Below is a picture of the blister after draining.

The worst occurred two nights ago and, more than anything, made me mad. No, wait, it really hurt, too. It happens that the orange hut had fallen into a state of disarray, and I fell prey. Immediately before heading to bed (tent), I needed to get to an antenna bag that was over *there*. The paths to over *there* were blocked by big batteries on one side and empty cardboard boxes on the other. I chose the boxes. I lacked finesse. I tripped going forward, tried to catch myself backwards, tripped going backwards, fell going backwards, spiraled towards the ground and –WHAM!-- …….. landed on a big cable spool. …….On my crotch. It hurt. Really, really bad. Luckily, there was no one else in the hut, and I could yell my profanities and safely leave my footprint in one of the boxes that had so viciously tripped me up. Go figure that the worst of ‘em is going to be in the hut, not in the field.

And, I have minor frost nip on the bridge of my nose, between the lower reaches of my goggles and the upper reaches of my balaclava.