so trip was awesome. perfect weather, great company. awesome food (best restaurant was an old church/monastery where we had lobster and "sexy coffee" which is a flaming boozy coffee drink w/ ice cream). lots of reading mindless books on the beach while sipping banana daiquiris and other such delicacies. also visited mayan ruins, shopped, snorkeled and watched college basketball at a local "irish pub" that served pastrami sandwiches and guacamole, dos equis and guinness.
and we scuba dived...dove...dev(?). diving was sort of the whole point of the trip- we stayed at a dive/snorkel resort. we were slated to do 2 boat dives a day for 3 days. i was dragging my feet going into it because the two days of training last summer (in a cold, murky inland lake and a peed-in high school swimming pool) were not as fun as they sound. i had a mask malfunction on me during the training and so between nerves about losing my equipment/drowning and worry that my motion sickness issues would make me miserable, i was very afraid. but after we got on the boat the first day and it was a beautiful morning and i wasn't feeling nauseous (thank you, dramamine, my BFF), i started to relax. and even on the first dive, i felt surprisingly natural, comfortable, and in control. we dove through some coral tunnels and saw many amazing animals of all shapes and sizes. good times were being had. until i gave myself brain damage and third degree burns.
see, the thing was....since i was so paranoid about my mask falling off, i harnessed it down around my head...emphatically. it squeezed a lot and when i was down at about 80ft the pressure was rather uncomfortable (think cartoon wolf w/ eyes popping out on a slinky when he sees his wolfy heart throb). but again, i was afraid to mess with it, plus, i didn't know what it was SUPPOSED to feel like, so i just endured. evidently that is NOT what it is supposed to feel like. i ended up with 2 pretty nasty, puffy, red/black eyes that lingered like that for a few days. i also kneeled in some fire coral which left some burn patches on one calf...which apparently can fester and boil and linger for weeks or more. but i got lucky and there was a knowledgeable crew on board who could understand my poor spanish (i think i said the equivalent of "there's a red menace ate my foot leg shoe and hurt it me ouch bad"). enough to fix it by pouring vinegar on it. the pain and redness went away immediately. gracias a dios.
so, that was the end of my diving adventures. i will dive again, but for the rest of this trip, i let the BHE and my dad do all the diving while my mum and i sat on the beach and snorkeled and generally avoided further trauma.
so despite all my whining, trust me when i say it was a perfect trip. and soooo relaxing. sigh.
i'm still relaxed from my toes up through my hair. coming back to work this week was great. you'd think i'd be all growly about having to come off vacation, but i'm actually feeling so excited about my job, thrilled by the friends i'm making there...it's so comfortable for me (most days) that it feels like home. ask me again next week. this weekend i'm working/on call both saturday and sunday and then on monday i'm doing 2 cases w/ a tricky doc followed by a difficult vascular case. and then i'm on afternoons all next week. welcome back!
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