A Hundred Times The Pain

Health. There’s no “Fun” in the word health, unlike “Fun” or “Funny”. I guess there’s “Ha” and “He”, but there’s also “Hate” and “Lthahe”. I am not a lexiconologist, but I am quite sure that the Latin or Greek or German or Whatever derivative of the word Health is not related to Fun or Entertaining or Excitement. It’s probably more related to Pendulum, something that swings back and forth forever changing its speed and position and always gravitating to one spot (which could be death, or could be life, or could the bottom of the pendulum swing). Regardless, this is not a humorous story. It’s also not meant to be one of those stories that propels you into a philosophical state wanting to contemplate life and death like Aritstotle or Plato or Descartes or Doctor Kevorkian or Doctor Nick Riviera. It’s just a story. If it makes you sit up in your chair and go “Fwoar” or “Wow” or “Holy f’ing crap, your jerking my gherkin?”, then cool because 49% of the population is male and 100% of that population likes gruesome stories. If you think that it is a long short story that goes on and on without much of anything, then that’s fine with this author, at least you won’t ask what happened again. But this is my story on the night of Sunday the 9^th of April 2006 and the morning of Monday the 10^th of April 2006. This is my story, these are my thoughts, and these are the events.

I am in Mirissa, by myself. I have been dropped off by the Danish Red Cross en route, and my mate from Colombo isn’t coming til tomorrow. The beach is very quiet, as it is the week of Sri Lankan New Year, so most local-tourists go to the hill country where it is nice and cool and the rest go back to their village to be with their families. It’s also off peak season in the South, so there’s fewer tourists. Hanging with other whities seems pretty lame, so I head off to my Beach Posse headed by Kasey. It’s their holiday season; no work, not much to do. Time to crack open the Arrack and smoke some joints. Merrily, I join in for the night. It’s the third or fourth time I visited – he remembers me, and his slow laid back half-Jamaican half-Sri Lankan half-Pidgeon English voice asks about Emma. I try to imitate his voice, to make it easier for Kasey to understand and because Beach-going-holiday-making Byron is cool with the gang; Emma’s fine and will be joining in a few days. The drink and smoke and talk goes on for hours, from the waves in Aragum Bay near where Emma and I live to the different sort of weed in Australia and Sri Lanka. And then, I decide, it’s time I crash.

I hate my shoes. I bought them in Bangladesh, and just never got around to upgrading. They are not comfortable. They are a hassle to buckle and unbuckle at every house and office. They are falling apart. And they smell like my feet. But never have they put me in danger before. Never have they caused such a raucous as tonight. I have to walk along the highway by night to get to the hotel, so I kneel down to buckle my shoes. It’s dark in Kasey’s beach side restaurant. The lights are off, but I don’t even think twice before placing my right knee on the hard floor to do up my left buckle. I’ve never seen anything dangerous before, have I? My eyes are half shut, I’m slow and tired. I fiddle oh so briefly with my left buckle before I notice a pain in my right knee, growing and growing. Before I can finish my right shoe, I stand to see what it is. Perhaps I am kneeling on a lit cigarette? I look down at my right knee and see nothing. I lift my shorts, because I can definitely feel the pain. There are two holes, one slightly larger with a drip of blood running down the leg. I’m perplexed: but how can a cigarette do this!? I look around on the floor to see what has breached my skin, twice, and caused this pain to grow and grow and grow.

It’s long. I’ve never seen one as large as this, in or outside of Sri Lanka. But could it have been this that pierced my casing? There’s nothing else around. It’s a dark dark red leading into black along the edges. It’s two thirds the size of a school boy’s thirty centimetre rules. It’s walking, almost wriggling, away. It knows what it has done, and it probably thinks revenge is on its way. But it’s not. I still don’t have my shoes on it to squish it in its tracks. I am so perplexed by all this, stunned, shocked, in awe of what is going on, that I just watch it walk and wriggle and walk away. It’s got at least a hundred legs, all black all walking in synchronisation to get the body out of harms way. And before I realise how much pain I am in, the centipede is gone. I look back at my leg like it’s a foreign part of my body, the pain has grown to verge on excruciating. I contemplate heading back to the hotel and not saying anything, thinking the pain will just disappear. After all, it’s only a centipede, right? The pain grows and grows. I call Kasey who is standing by the door a foot or two away. He’s talking to some other members of the Beach Posse. Him and the one I call Pissu Lanka (Crazy Lankan) come over. “I’ve been bitten by something”. Kasey looks at me as perplexed as I looked at the centipede, “What do you mean Byron?” he says in that slow laid back way that makes me think he’s half asleep, “you’ve been bitten now?”. I try to keep as cool calm and collected as one can be in the face of language barriers in the face of adversity and all other random events blocking the communication path. “Yes, I’ve just been bitten by something, it’s got lots of legs is red and black and walks and is this long”. I lift up the right leg of my shorts to show the two pricks one with blood where the centipede violated me. One final time I am asked, “You have just been bitten now? Here?”. A stern short curt but not unpleasant “Yes” is resounded.

Instantly, Pissu Lanka and Kasey get into gear. Voices are raised, lights are turned on. Pissu Lanka pulls out his torch that he uses to check out the waves around the full moon period to do night surfing. I point to the chairs and tables where the centipede had crawled towards. Kasey throws a table and chair across to the other side as if they were what had bit me. Kasey keeps prodding me for information, “What did it look like?”, “Are you feeling alright?”; followed by reassurance, “Don’t worry Byron, you’ll be fine”, “No problem Byron… no problem”. They furiously look in the corner of the restaurant, but to no avail. After a minute, they give up and return to me. All the commotion leads to panic setting in, “What’s wrong Kasey?”, “Is it dangerous?”, “Could I die Pissu Lanka?”. I ask that final question several times to the two that speak English, “Could I die?”, “Is it deadly?”. I wait for an acceptable response, which arrives with comfort. “No, you will just be in pain.” “Have you been bitten before?” “Yes, twice”, Kasey retorts in his oh so laid back manner. Comfort arrives, though panic and pain still remain.

“Byron, we need to get you to a healer”. By now I realise that this is not an ordinary centipede, but rather that it is poisonous. The entire region around my right knee is starting to warm up, with this throbbing pain that makes it feel like it is on fire. “I need a tourniquet, I need some string to tie my leg”. They look for string, and Pissu Lanka looks for lime to reduce the pain, but the restaurant is closed in the off season and nothing is available except Arrack, and that won’t do. They try to tie my leg off with a plastic bag that may as well have not been there. We begin the walk to the nearby tuk-tuk stand. It’s probably fifty meters away, and I walk on my own for the entire length. Kasey and I keep asking each other questions, “Are you feeling okay?” making me more worried followed by “This isn’t deadly, right?”.

We arrive at the tuk-tuk stand, but nobody is around except the five or six members of Kasey’s Beach Posse that have come along. Everyone is talking in Sinhalese around me, and Kasey keeps asking me if I am feeling alright, if the pain is getting worse, and where the pain is. All the Sinhalese chatter in the background is happening at such a frantic pace with such a fear in the voice, that without understanding a word I know exactly what is being said. The pain is intensifying, but not spreading much further than my leg. People are standing around, but nobody is running off to try and get a tuk-tuk or vehicle. They are yelling at each other in a hurried voice, trying to make a decision as what to do next with the sickly foreigner. The stakes are high, for everyone.

“Kasey, I’m feeling faint”. Out of nowhere, the words whimper out of my mouth. I didn’t even mean to say it, the words just came right out of my mouth before it seemed that I had even started feeling faint; almost a reaction to the situation. The pain is intense, but suddenly my entire body has started to weaken. Shit Byron, what’s going on. Panic. Fright. Terror. Fear. Alarm. Horror. Dread. “You’re feeling faint Byron?”, he asks rhetorically but in such a way that I know he knows exactly what it means. “Yeah man… faint”. He says something in Sinhalese, and two of the posse prop me up, one under each arm. I’m out of my mind at this stage. Picture it: On a main road in a “sleepy hollow of a town” (Lonelyplanet); using two local boys for crutches just so I can stand; there are no vehicles in sight (no parked cars, no vehicles fullstop, except one bicyle lying around); I am surrounded by six or so twenty something year olds so frightened of the situation they almost seem whiter than me; and no mobile phone. I quickly check my pockets on this last point, and no mobile phone. Later on I will briefly ask to borrow somebody elses phone to make a call, and then realise I don’t know any phone numbers in Sri Lanka except my own mobile phone. The situation, from the outside, is not looking good. And it definitely is not looking good from my position.

“Yeah man… faint”. As soon as those words pass my mouth, as soon as those two boys prop me up, it gets worse. I pass out. I lose consciousness. I know its only for a brief moment, but it feels like forever. I start to recover, my upper body comes back first, but I cant focus on anything; everything is just a blur. I am still not standing on my own two feet, though I try and try and try. Its as if my feet cant get a grip on the solid group. My legs try to push up and hold my weight, but they just flop around like a fish on and. In and out of consciousness. When out of consciousness, everything is blurry and I cant hear or make out any words – just voices that seem in the distance. When in consciousness, I feel weak, pain, and my head tries to grasp the events that are occurring, “I need a tourniquet” thinking that will help. Out of nowhere, a plastic outdoorsy chair comes. As soon as I fall into, my body collapses into an epileptic fit. I’ve never had one before; it doesn’t feel strange, it just feels like sleep when actually fitting. I have no control or awareness of my body. I begin to come out of it, and realise that my body is still massively convulsing with five of the boys pinning me down to the chair trying to prevent me from shuddering and convulsing and shaking. Its not use, the body is doing what it does and nobody can stop it.

In and out of consciousness, perceptions are completely distorted. Tuk-tuks, cars and trucks are passing, and they are trying to stop them but they dodge the group which must seem like a gang about to hijack. Picture it. A group of boys on the side of the road, me in a chair that cant be seen, all waving frantically and in the middle of the road trying to stop your vehicle – would you stop? This is no use, nobody is going to stop them. “Pick me up Kasey, I want to get into the middle of the road”. Maybe, just maybe, they may stop if they see me? Two people prop me up in the middle of the road. Lights are coming, but I cant focus. I cant hear whats going on around me. The lights seem also as if they are here. I shake my head to straighten things out, and squint to focus on the lights as hard as I can. I try with all my might. Eventually, it focuses on the lights – its much further than I think. It’s a tuk-tuk, taking forever to traverse down the beachside road at night. They literally corner the tuk-tuk on the nearby bridge, it has nowhere to go. There’s a mother and a daughter in the back, and a driver wondering what the heck is going on and just wanting to be out of there. I get my two five foot four crutches to help me hobble to the vehicle. By the time I get there, they know what is going on and the passengers reluctantly get out.

One of my crutches gets in first, followed by me and Kasey flanked on my right with my leg on top of him. Three others try to get in the vehicle, but I make some noises that may have sound like displeasure, and only one other gets in. There’s four of us in the car. Myself. Kasey. Pissu Lanka. And another random guy who always smokes the roach to the end. I hear that fresh laid back voice again, “Keep talking to me Byron, you gotta keep talking to me”. We talk. And talk. And talk. About waves. About his past experiences with centipedes. Within minutes of entering the tuk tuk and raising my leg, I am completely conscious and fine, “Wow, that seemed close Kasey”. A wry smile crosses my face… everything’s going to be just fine.

It takes a full half an hour to get to Matara hospital. It’s been just over an hour since I was bitten. I throw a thousand rupees at someone to pay for the tuk-tuk here and to get them home. The hospital is bare, though it seems well equipped for snake and insect bites – after ten minutes of explaining to numerous people what has transpired, I am in the “emergency” room which has a picture of thirty odd snakes and some Sinhalese under each one, instructions for what to do. Once propped onto the bed, the lady night-doctor asks me the same question I have heard about thirty times before, “So you have been bitten. What did it look like?” as she peers over the two punctures. I am completely kept in the dark over the process, but strangely I feel comfortable as I imagine they have done this thousands of times before. They come back with three pills – two Panadol, one Puritin (basic antibiotic). They take some blood, which I can only assume is to test the type of poison pulsing through my veins. I try to explain that I have had an epileptic fit in the meanwhile, but they just ignore it and move on – later on the next night-doctor will interrogate me more about this, and then forget it had ever been talked about. That same doctor will also say, “In Australia, doctors tell patients about everything they are doing and all the processes. Yeah? Ha Ha. Not in Sri Lanka.”. I was sure he was trained in Germany.

“Mr Pakula, we are going to keep you over night for observation. You will be fine”. That’s the most I ever get out of any doctor. I get moved to another bed in a room with forty two other patients, half coughing the other half asleep and wriggling. I receive special treatment, not having to be in an aisle and being close to the doctors table. Everything is orderly and scant, except the patients. Somehow I have managed to keep a book in my pocket the entire time, so trying not to touch the dirty sheets too much and not wanting to sleep in this environment, I prop my head up on my elbow and read Phillip Roth. I hobble out for a smoko around 3am, and again at 6am after I accidentally sleep for a little bit. I hobble across the road to the roti shop at 8am pretending not to be a patient and buying some breaky. After three more doctors checks, and having to wait for the fourth by the head doctor on duty, I finally get the all clear to head out… and not a minute too soon. I have had enough of the stench of death and disease, and Pissu Lanka was waiting to take me back in the tuk-tuk. Two more Panadols later, nothing to sign and nothing to pay, I walk out of the hospital and head back to Mirissa. I think I wont smoke any more joints today.