Monday, December 16, 2019

The Strange Ingrown Hair

While in Ethiopia I had a very strange experience with what I thought was an ingrown hair.  ** Warning - This is gross **  So during our second week in Ethiopia I developed a sore that was like a pimple on my back side.  And like most pimples, I decided it is best to squeeze it and irritate it so that it gets infected.  That is what I did.  After several days of me bothering it, it was very red and sore and the redness was growing.  It would be painful at times with like a pinching feeling.  I figured I was sitting wrong on it.  Yes, backside actually means my buns.  But we were sitting on hard, wooden seats a lot so I figured that is what was irritating it.  The bummer is that I couldn't really get a good pinch on it or see it very well so all my squeezing was not effective.

Finally, one day after realizing it was most likely infected and I couldn't pop it, I asked Steve to try to pop it.  He tried but said I should go talk to the nurse on our team.  So down I went to her room and showed her my sore.  She gave it a good squeeze and nothing happened.  She said it just needed to work its way out.  It might take another day.  But nothing deters my squeezing need, so later that evening while we were back in our hotel room, I had Steve squeeze it as hard as he could.  It was quite painful.  But finally he got it to pop.  A hard white rice size piece came out, like a hardened pus piece or something.  I was like, "Cool, let me see it."  So Steve put it in my hand as I lay there on the bed and lo and behold the rice shape pus started growing and then moving.  It was a worm!  A worm was under my skin, eating me!  Now, I like gross and weird medical stuff so I wasn't freaking out, I was excited.  So I took my worm and brought him out to the team of teenagers and college aged kids and showed them what came out of my body.  They were not impressed, but rather quite grossed out. One person told Micah it was his brother and Micah named him Satan.

It is now four months later and I still have a black spot where the worm came out.  I think it will be my reminder of the experience and how Steve is my hero.  Other husbands said they would never have done that for their wives.  But my husband bravely squeezed my worm out.  HERO!

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