my last few days in england

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I'll start off where I left off, my trip to Kojo's in Charlton. So after getting to London Victoria I had reached Kojo and also learned his cell was running out of battery. We decided to make it easier on myself since i didnt know the area too well and head to the London Bridge station. Not thinking about time and obviously location, we soon learned that was the worst idea possible. Because of rain, part of the train track had been flooded, or so they said, and the London Bridge station was huge. There was the Underground and the British Rail Way and both had 2 different locations to come in at. Not knowing this for the first 30 minutes i was there i stayed in a pretty busy area where i thought i might catch him in all the traffic. Not too much later i asked a guard if there were other locations people might come in and he started naming off different locations, confusing the shit out of me. I decided to give myself a little tour of the area and found about 6 different entrance/exit locations to the station from the outside and 4 different entrance/exit locations for trains. At that point i knew i was fucked...excuse my language. So after doing a 2 hour search of the area at peak times right when people were getting out of work i decided to try and head to a hostel that was in my "Lonely Planets" Europe guide. Now only because it was a good amount away and i really was a little frustrated with the trains, I chose to take a taxi to the hostel which ended up costing about 15 pounds. When i finally got there, I had gotten buzzed in and zapped up to the 3rd floor only to be told "No" two times and "around the corner." I swore they said in the book that the people working at hostels would be well educated about the surrounding area and would be able to help with any common travel questions. I guess just not this lady. So back down i went and out to the wild i search. I soon found out that "around the corner," meant go down to your right 3 blocks, turn left "around the corner" and look to your right if you want to find an internet cafe. The reason for the internet cafe was because along my trek through different train stations and taxi rides i lost the piece of paper with Kojo's number for both his cell and house. By this time it was 8 pm and with his number now in hand i decided to get back to the main objective, Kojo's house.
By 9:30 pm i was there and warn out but still ready to go out. The night ended there but the next day we continued out to Down Town London again and during the night we headed to meet with a few of his friends from Uni. It actually reminded me of my time with friends from home because we couldnt make a decision for the life of us on which pub to go to. It was either too expensive or too posh and all of us had a pretty relaxed fit going. Luck caught up with us though and we ended up going to a really cool pub that plays live Jazz every night.
After a couple hours of that we all decided to head back...this is where things got really tricky. To get back we had to take buses because the trains stopped running at 12 am. The train ride to get there was about 30 min. and a straight shot so i could only imagine how long the bus ride was going to take. Funny thing was, there was only one bus that went out the Charlton and to get that bus we had to get to bus stop "P" and wait for bus 53. After about 25 minutes of walking and searching for bus stop "P" we saw out bus we needed parked off to the side of the street and asked him how long it would take to get to stop "P" thinking he might say, oh im heading there soon, get in and well leave shortly. Haha, that was a mistake. This guy had to be one of the most disappointed people ive ever met. Without even saying a hello back to us or anything he firmly told us the directions back to the stop and when we started to confirm the directions to get there he interrupted us and told us the exact same thing with even more firmness in his voice. We laughed it off and kept our trek going. Now we were in search of a fast food place other than McD's and the illusive bus stop "P." At about 1:15 we came across bus stop "P" and right next to it was a fast food restaurant which of course had to be McD's. Luckily our hunger was stopped dead in its tracks because they were now closed which came to a bit of a surprise but still a very good thing. A little later the bus came by and picked us up and we found ourself a little ways off from the house and ready for bed.
After 2 days at Kojo's i headed back down to Danny's to meet with the Doctor and check up on my thumb. He gave me more antibiotics to help my thumb go down a little. He told me to come back on Sat. but i thought since i was just getting the same thing done, i would get the things needed and take care of it myself.
Saturday came around and i found a giant bubble coming out of the wound. It couldnt be popped and it could move side to side a little. I thought huh, maybe i should just take it out...so thats exactly what i did. I took my sterile tweezers from my first aid kit and tugged it out. With no pain and only feeling a couple pieces of skin being pulled apart i now saw what was really going on. After pacing my room a couple times and thinking to myself, "oh shit, oh shit, what the fuck do i do NOW!" i decided to head to the front desk and ask the person there what to do. He freaked out more than i did and came up with a plan to have a in home doctor come to the hotel and look at it. At first i was uncertain why but with his master plan of me saying i was throwing up and my thumb was in massive pain i would surely get a doc out the place. I told him no, afraid that it would come back and bite me in the ass if i lied about it, i asked him to call me a taxi and take me to the closest hospital. Unfortunately the closest one was just closing in 4 min and so i went the next one which was a lot more major of a hospital. After 2 hours of waiting to see a nurse and another hour for xrays the nurse took me to a room to clean the hole out. I was laughing only because I couldnt believe this had gotten so developed and he quickly shut me up and told me, " Im taking this very serious and i think you should be too." I really had nothing to say. I knew it was serious but really what was the other alternative, crying, running out the door in disbelief, knocking him out for saying such a thing? ahha, i mean come on i think laughing was and would be again the best way to handle a situation like that. So after taking pictures and having 4 different doctors look at these pics and xrays and having great facial expressions, i soon started to let this all sink in. I was given an appointment with a plastic surgeon for a couple days later and at that point decided to let this go out of my own hand only because i was pretty even on weather i took care of this here or went back to the US to take care of everything. If you look at nothing else but the cost of everything, going home, even with the cost of the flight to get there and back, was going to be a cheaper way of doing things. The major one was that i had no travelers insurance and so everything would have been out of pocket where as the cost back at home would have been minimized a great deal because of insurance. The other thing was that the cost of the flight is a large sum but for me to stay in the hotel(and yes a hotel would be required because its a clean environment) for the same time that i would have to stay home to fully recuperate would have been more expensive than the plane flight itself. So when i called my worried and histaric mom and filled her in on the nurses sugesions, she insisted on me flying back. I did at the time try to get some other opinions on the ordeal, one from my father and another from marc, but unfortunately was unable to reach either of them. I guess it turned out to be a good thing though.
Its now been 5 days that ive been home and have undergone surgery on my thumb. The surgery only took an hour, but my stay in the hostpital afterwards was 3 days. Mainly to heal a little and make sure my body wasnt acting strange to the antibiotics that ive been using. During the surgery i wasnt put to sleep because I had eaten a few hours before not knowing that anything would have taken place that day. The other way of doing things was numbing my thumb right before surgery. I was stuck in about 8 different locations with fluid which caused my hand to look pretty swollen. Dr. Nelson had told me before the surgery that i wouldnt feel pain but i would feel presure. Ill tell you what, either i was thinking i was in pain or that was complete bullshit. I could feel the slicing, which really wasnt painfull but when he said to me, "now i will use presurized water to rinse your thumb out," i thought, man thats a bold face lie because when he started, it felt like he took a rotary saw and was sawing away my bone. I could have sworn there was a hold this size of a nickel in my thumb. He kept asking, "are you feeling pain, does this hurt?" and then proceded to kill my thumb. But in the end, he showed me the devistating hole and it was no bigger than 8 mm in diameter.
Now that im completely free of the Staff infection, or somewhat, I now need to stay here for 8 weeks. 6 of which are to get antibiotics injected through my PICC line which is an IV that inserts at my inner bicept and goes all the way to the top of my heart, and then another 2 weeks to make sure that the staff infection doesnt pick up when im off the antibiotics. After that im off again, now not for 5 months but probably 2 to 3, 2 at least. Soon ill have pics of the new wound post surgery.

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