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Wednesday, 19 Sep 07
Let me note here that not only was the town of Moalboal off-the-beaten path, but it was also quite remote. We were a good three-hour drive from the main metropolis of this particular group of Filipino islands, Cebu City. So when the drive to our canyon destination took us an hour from Moalboal, I knew that we were really, really in the middle of nowhere on an island in the middle of nowhere.
But never before has nowhere been more stunning. We hiked to the top of a mountain in the center of the jungle, at the peak of which was a 360 degree view of the water, accompanied by the lush, rolling hills that only Asian scenery can provide, banana trees, monkeys, pepper plants, birds-of-paradise, orchids, and a mountaintop village hundreds of years old, accessible only by foot.
Our group of eight (two guides, a Korean couple, a mother-daughter set from London, and my friend and me) hiked up and over the mountain, through the village and its corn patch and halfway down the backside until we reached the mouth of the tiny, exquisite, and sparklingly dreamy canyon. As our guides set up the ropes, I was in awe of the place. Turquoise blue water like I had never seen, waterfalls, streams, rivers, rocks, cliffs; they stretched and slithered out and down in front of me. I was thrilled, excited, cocky, impassioned, inspired and rip-roaring to go. (Having grown up in one of the most beautiful mountain towns in the world, I have been a bit conditioned to gorgeous views and impressive natural feats of beauty, but this one definitely took a piece of the cake.) And as I descended down and began to rappel the first waterfall of the day, I remember thinking absolutely nothing.
It was those perfect, nothing thoughts I was having about ten minutes later after swimming through a glassy pool, jumping off a cliff, popping over a few boulders as I sat down on the edge of another mossy boulder. Water was flowing under and down below me into a sandy-bottom stream about seven-feet below. Almost everyone had gone before me, (even the elderly and already exhausted British mother who was quickly realizing this was out of her league and the whiny Korean girl who squealed the entire day), effortlessly sliding down the rock. Again, I wasn’t thinking at all when I went.
But I landed and had an actual thought for the first time in ten minutes. “Hmm, that feels funny. I feel like I don’t have a right foot.” I lifted up my right leg and my foot was twisted around towards me, I was looking at the sole of it. Before anyone around me even really realized what had happened, I slammed my ankle back into place and said, “Its not ok.”
No one had any idea what to do. This was the Philippines and our guides had no first aid training, no exit plan, and not even a band-aid in their dry bags. I could definitely not walk and every time I moved my right leg, my ankle popped out of place and I screamed like I have never heard myself scream before. My friend, the guides, these strangers, all looked at me, terrified, thinking, “What the hell are we going to do?”
It was then that I realized that I had to get myself out of this. There was going to be no ski patrol, no friend or brother with their Wilderness First Responder, no cell phones worked, no one could carry me, I couldn’t call my parents, I couldn’t even bother to cry. I had to do it.
My options were to figure out a way to get back up the waterfall behind us, hike back up and down the mountain, possibly hire some villagers to carry me down once we got back to the top OR, continue down through the canyon. Someone found two pieces of bamboo and we splinted my leg with those, a t-shirt, some straps, and an extra harness. It was a two-hour journey out of that canyon, with two working legs. I had one working leg and a leg broken in two places, as we would find out later.
The next two hours seemed to never end. I crawled over rocks and through rivers; I swam across natural pools and cliff-jumped off rocks. I rappelled down another waterfall. I slid down river tubes and limped across land to get out of there. I cried only twice. Both times as I was swimming across one of the pools while everyone else was ahead scouting/getting out of my way/trying to enjoy their afternoon and I had sadly realized two things. The first, something was really wrong. The second, this place was so goddamn beautiful and I had to gimp my way through it.
But I got out. I was braver, stronger, more decisive and tough than I ever knew I was, or could be. Before that day I had never met that person, that woman who dragged herself (with the help of two guides and a friend, of course) out of a canyon in the Philippines, but now I am so happy and proud to know her, to be her.
Unfortunately my adventure was not over once I got out of that canyon. As I said, we were in a remote jungle, the closest “hospital” would have set me on a bed next to a cow or if, I was lucky, a pet monkey. I didn’t get to an actual, modern hospital until 24 hours later. When I did, I sat in that emergency room for an hour trying to convince the ER doctors that I had a flight the next morning and I had to be at work on Monday. This effort didn’t last so long, actually it lasted until the cute doctor just continued to laugh kindly, point out at the jagged fractures on my x-rays and shake his head.
I had completely fractured my medial malleolus (the bone that holds your ankle bone in place); a chunk of it was floating around, and was the reason why my ankle kept popping out of place. I had also fractured my fibula. Suddenly and terrifyingly, I heard the doctor saying, “Well, you might have surgery but you’ll have to wait and talk to the orthopedic surgeon after you are admitted.”
Surgery!? Admitted!? What!? I am hilariously frightened of needles; I have never spent the night in the hospital, never had stitches, and never had surgery. But the next thing I knew I was in room C-420 and my Orthopedic Surgeon, clad in a red Aloha shirt, was telling me I could not fly until my ankle had been stabilized, i.e. I had surgery and an screw inserted into my ankle to hold it together. I decided it was time to call my parents. They didn’t even know I was in the hospital yet.
My loyal and brave friend was with me throughout this entire thing, holding my hand, holding me up as I went to the bathroom, even changing me out of my bathing suit, but she was leaving the next night, as she had finished her contract in Korea and was meeting a friend in Hong Kong. I was going to be alone in a hospital in the Philippines. And at that point, I was not only getting ready for surgery, but now on my mental back burner there was also the fact that I was going to be alone, in a hospital, in a hospital in the Philippines.
This is not to say that the staff at Chong Hua hospital was anything but amazing. Everyone, even the boy who came to empty my trash every day, spoke perfect English and treated me with great kindness. They were nice and helpful even though Asian hospitals are designed to be a bit different than ones in North America. They are a bit… self-serve. Each patient is intended to have a family member with them at all times, there is even an extra bed for this person in every room. I was going to have no one, and the light switch was on the other side of the room and my bed could only be raised by a lever at the foot of it. There was no way the friendly geckos on my wall could go get me water or help me get back to Korea.
About ten minutes after agreeing to surgery, I was signing a consent form and my friend was tucking my hair into a little surgical cap. Just as we were leaving the room, my mom called (I couldn’t make outside calls from my room, so my friend had to go downstairs and call my mom or my boss and tell them to call me) and said my dad was coming. He had been in Alaska taking my brother to college and would be in Cebu two nights later. He had air miles and a sleeping bag, I realized right then that the single, greatest thing about parents is never having to ask for a thing. I would have to spend about thirty hours alone but he was coming. I had gotten myself out of that canyon, though now I was forced to admit I needed help getting out of the country, emotionally and physically.
My surgery went well and I woke up saying to the anesthesiologist and doctors, “Hey guys, lets go get some more beer.”
Eventually, six days later actually, I made it back to Korea. My dad had single-handedly made my return possible, going across town to buy our plane tickets (the only way possible), buying me food, getting my prescriptions from the pharmacy, making phone calls, and taking my exhausted credit card downstairs to pay for everything. (I did not have travel insurance, at the time, much to my chagrin. But as time and research for another article has shown, it would have been a mess to convince any travel insurance company to pay for anything when ropes at one point had suspended me in the day.) He pushed my wheelchair and helped me dodge ignorant tourists in the airports. He had spent two rough nights on that cot in my hospital and was now flying me back to my Korean home. I’ll never forget the moment he walked into my hospital room, I balled. Welcome to the Philippines, Dad.
As I said, I eventually made it back to Korea. My leg is casted up, the stitches are finally removed, my crutches are beautifully decorated with Smith, US Ski Team, Alaska Pacific University, Sun Valley, and Moab stickers. A friend even shipped me some saddle bags made for crutches. A month and a half later, I am still in the cast, still on the crutches, waiting and hoping for the difficult and irascible fibula to heal. My Korean doctor says I have a few more months to go, and my Idahoan physical therapist can’t argue that.
The recovery has been and will be just as much as an adventure. As a proud and stubborn young woman, I have been forced to ask for help for everything. This is miles and miles outside of my emotional comfort zone. I am the girl who takes care of herself, who takes care of others, as a child of divorce I went through years of therapy learning to trust people. But now here I am, in a foreign country, living alone, and debatably completely broken.
My bosses pick me up for work every morning, my friends do my grocery shopping and take out my garbage, a neighbor vacuums my apartment, my students carry my books for me and my co-worker holds my office chair still while I sit down. This emotional and mental part of the journey has been incredibly difficult for me. “Thank you” has become my most commonly used and most beloved phrase. I wish I could find the words that express the feeling of gratitude more accurately.
This is not that say that everything has been perfect. I am more emotionally alone than I have ever been, I cry once a day; I call my parents at all hours of their night no matter how expensive it is for me. I threaten to kick people out of my apartment if they tell me one more time how impressed they are by me, or how everything happens for a reason. I am perpetually annoyed at how my best friends’ boyfriends seem to take precedence over me. I damn the day that my crutches became an extension of my body. I shower once every three days no matter how much I smell in between because it is such a hassle.
Inevitably, through it all, ironically, obviously, and poetically, I have learned so much in the past few months. I learned the strength, the power, and the bravery of the person I have become. I have shocked my previously impenetrable emotional defenses, and grown. I have pride in myself.
I have also learned just how much I need others. That needing help and the even more difficult, asking for help, is a part of life, especially my life, right now.
It’s a complicated balance, independence and reliance, and I am still learning just how to stack the scales. I live on the extremes of both. I was forced into; I fell into, being more independent than ever, being stronger than ever, more patient than ever and more understanding than ever. But there I also stand, on the other side. The side that reminds me how much help I need, the side that reminds me I can’t take out my recycling or do my own grocery shopping, and that while I wish I didn’t have to ask, I sometimes just do. The middle ground just will not do, I am learning.
Perhaps I will never get it down pat, but I am so grateful for the opportunity to try. It’s a lesson I possibly would learn no other way. And yes, I am spending all my days and nights on my couch with my leg elevated and I am missing nights in bars, games of Ultimate Frisbee, dinners in Seoul, weekend adventures, field trips with my Kindergarten, and trips to China, but I remind myself every day just what I am getting out of all this.
Ok, actually, I do really care a whole lot about missing those things. It sucks. And I really want to shave my leg and scratch the top of my foot, but I guess priorities change when you break your leg in a canyon in the Philippines. (I rescheduled my September zip-line trip down the Great Wall of China for March and I’m already planning Malaysia at Christmas.)
Welcome to the Philippines, Dad
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Let me note here that not only was the town of Moalboal off-the-beaten path, but it was also quite remote. We were a good three-hour drive from the main metropolis of this particular group of Filipino islands, Cebu City. So when the drive to our canyon destination took us an hour from Moalboal, I knew that we were really, really in the middle of nowhere on an island in the middle of nowhere.
But never before has nowhere been more stunning. We hiked to the top of a mountain in the center of the jungle, at the peak of which was a 360 degree view of the water, accompanied by the lush, rolling hills that only Asian scenery can provide, banana trees, monkeys, pepper plants, birds-of-paradise, orchids, and a mountaintop village hundreds of years old, accessible only by foot.
Our group of eight (two guides, a Korean couple, a mother-daughter set from London, and my friend and me) hiked up and over the mountain, through the village and its corn patch and halfway down the backside until we reached the mouth of the tiny, exquisite, and sparklingly dreamy canyon. As our guides set up the ropes, I was in awe of the place. Turquoise blue water like I had never seen, waterfalls, streams, rivers, rocks, cliffs; they stretched and slithered out and down in front of me. I was thrilled, excited, cocky, impassioned, inspired and rip-roaring to go. (Having grown up in one of the most beautiful mountain towns in the world, I have been a bit conditioned to gorgeous views and impressive natural feats of beauty, but this one definitely took a piece of the cake.) And as I descended down and began to rappel the first waterfall of the day, I remember thinking absolutely nothing.
It was those perfect, nothing thoughts I was having about ten minutes later after swimming through a glassy pool, jumping off a cliff, popping over a few boulders as I sat down on the edge of another mossy boulder. Water was flowing under and down below me into a sandy-bottom stream about seven-feet below. Almost everyone had gone before me, (even the elderly and already exhausted British mother who was quickly realizing this was out of her league and the whiny Korean girl who squealed the entire day), effortlessly sliding down the rock. Again, I wasn’t thinking at all when I went.
But I landed and had an actual thought for the first time in ten minutes. “Hmm, that feels funny. I feel like I don’t have a right foot.” I lifted up my right leg and my foot was twisted around towards me, I was looking at the sole of it. Before anyone around me even really realized what had happened, I slammed my ankle back into place and said, “Its not ok.”
No one had any idea what to do. This was the Philippines and our guides had no first aid training, no exit plan, and not even a band-aid in their dry bags. I could definitely not walk and every time I moved my right leg, my ankle popped out of place and I screamed like I have never heard myself scream before. My friend, the guides, these strangers, all looked at me, terrified, thinking, “What the hell are we going to do?”
It was then that I realized that I had to get myself out of this. There was going to be no ski patrol, no friend or brother with their Wilderness First Responder, no cell phones worked, no one could carry me, I couldn’t call my parents, I couldn’t even bother to cry. I had to do it.
My options were to figure out a way to get back up the waterfall behind us, hike back up and down the mountain, possibly hire some villagers to carry me down once we got back to the top OR, continue down through the canyon. Someone found two pieces of bamboo and we splinted my leg with those, a t-shirt, some straps, and an extra harness. It was a two-hour journey out of that canyon, with two working legs. I had one working leg and a leg broken in two places, as we would find out later.
The next two hours seemed to never end. I crawled over rocks and through rivers; I swam across natural pools and cliff-jumped off rocks. I rappelled down another waterfall. I slid down river tubes and limped across land to get out of there. I cried only twice. Both times as I was swimming across one of the pools while everyone else was ahead scouting/getting out of my way/trying to enjoy their afternoon and I had sadly realized two things. The first, something was really wrong. The second, this place was so goddamn beautiful and I had to gimp my way through it.
But I got out. I was braver, stronger, more decisive and tough than I ever knew I was, or could be. Before that day I had never met that person, that woman who dragged herself (with the help of two guides and a friend, of course) out of a canyon in the Philippines, but now I am so happy and proud to know her, to be her.
Unfortunately my adventure was not over once I got out of that canyon. As I said, we were in a remote jungle, the closest “hospital” would have set me on a bed next to a cow or if, I was lucky, a pet monkey. I didn’t get to an actual, modern hospital until 24 hours later. When I did, I sat in that emergency room for an hour trying to convince the ER doctors that I had a flight the next morning and I had to be at work on Monday. This effort didn’t last so long, actually it lasted until the cute doctor just continued to laugh kindly, point out at the jagged fractures on my x-rays and shake his head.
I had completely fractured my medial malleolus (the bone that holds your ankle bone in place); a chunk of it was floating around, and was the reason why my ankle kept popping out of place. I had also fractured my fibula. Suddenly and terrifyingly, I heard the doctor saying, “Well, you might have surgery but you’ll have to wait and talk to the orthopedic surgeon after you are admitted.”
Surgery!? Admitted!? What!? I am hilariously frightened of needles; I have never spent the night in the hospital, never had stitches, and never had surgery. But the next thing I knew I was in room C-420 and my Orthopedic Surgeon, clad in a red Aloha shirt, was telling me I could not fly until my ankle had been stabilized, i.e. I had surgery and an screw inserted into my ankle to hold it together. I decided it was time to call my parents. They didn’t even know I was in the hospital yet.
My loyal and brave friend was with me throughout this entire thing, holding my hand, holding me up as I went to the bathroom, even changing me out of my bathing suit, but she was leaving the next night, as she had finished her contract in Korea and was meeting a friend in Hong Kong. I was going to be alone in a hospital in the Philippines. And at that point, I was not only getting ready for surgery, but now on my mental back burner there was also the fact that I was going to be alone, in a hospital, in a hospital in the Philippines.
This is not to say that the staff at Chong Hua hospital was anything but amazing. Everyone, even the boy who came to empty my trash every day, spoke perfect English and treated me with great kindness. They were nice and helpful even though Asian hospitals are designed to be a bit different than ones in North America. They are a bit… self-serve. Each patient is intended to have a family member with them at all times, there is even an extra bed for this person in every room. I was going to have no one, and the light switch was on the other side of the room and my bed could only be raised by a lever at the foot of it. There was no way the friendly geckos on my wall could go get me water or help me get back to Korea.
About ten minutes after agreeing to surgery, I was signing a consent form and my friend was tucking my hair into a little surgical cap. Just as we were leaving the room, my mom called (I couldn’t make outside calls from my room, so my friend had to go downstairs and call my mom or my boss and tell them to call me) and said my dad was coming. He had been in Alaska taking my brother to college and would be in Cebu two nights later. He had air miles and a sleeping bag, I realized right then that the single, greatest thing about parents is never having to ask for a thing. I would have to spend about thirty hours alone but he was coming. I had gotten myself out of that canyon, though now I was forced to admit I needed help getting out of the country, emotionally and physically.
My surgery went well and I woke up saying to the anesthesiologist and doctors, “Hey guys, lets go get some more beer.”
Eventually, six days later actually, I made it back to Korea. My dad had single-handedly made my return possible, going across town to buy our plane tickets (the only way possible), buying me food, getting my prescriptions from the pharmacy, making phone calls, and taking my exhausted credit card downstairs to pay for everything. (I did not have travel insurance, at the time, much to my chagrin. But as time and research for another article has shown, it would have been a mess to convince any travel insurance company to pay for anything when ropes at one point had suspended me in the day.) He pushed my wheelchair and helped me dodge ignorant tourists in the airports. He had spent two rough nights on that cot in my hospital and was now flying me back to my Korean home. I’ll never forget the moment he walked into my hospital room, I balled. Welcome to the Philippines, Dad.
As I said, I eventually made it back to Korea. My leg is casted up, the stitches are finally removed, my crutches are beautifully decorated with Smith, US Ski Team, Alaska Pacific University, Sun Valley, and Moab stickers. A friend even shipped me some saddle bags made for crutches. A month and a half later, I am still in the cast, still on the crutches, waiting and hoping for the difficult and irascible fibula to heal. My Korean doctor says I have a few more months to go, and my Idahoan physical therapist can’t argue that.
The recovery has been and will be just as much as an adventure. As a proud and stubborn young woman, I have been forced to ask for help for everything. This is miles and miles outside of my emotional comfort zone. I am the girl who takes care of herself, who takes care of others, as a child of divorce I went through years of therapy learning to trust people. But now here I am, in a foreign country, living alone, and debatably completely broken.
My bosses pick me up for work every morning, my friends do my grocery shopping and take out my garbage, a neighbor vacuums my apartment, my students carry my books for me and my co-worker holds my office chair still while I sit down. This emotional and mental part of the journey has been incredibly difficult for me. “Thank you” has become my most commonly used and most beloved phrase. I wish I could find the words that express the feeling of gratitude more accurately.
This is not that say that everything has been perfect. I am more emotionally alone than I have ever been, I cry once a day; I call my parents at all hours of their night no matter how expensive it is for me. I threaten to kick people out of my apartment if they tell me one more time how impressed they are by me, or how everything happens for a reason. I am perpetually annoyed at how my best friends’ boyfriends seem to take precedence over me. I damn the day that my crutches became an extension of my body. I shower once every three days no matter how much I smell in between because it is such a hassle.
Inevitably, through it all, ironically, obviously, and poetically, I have learned so much in the past few months. I learned the strength, the power, and the bravery of the person I have become. I have shocked my previously impenetrable emotional defenses, and grown. I have pride in myself.
I have also learned just how much I need others. That needing help and the even more difficult, asking for help, is a part of life, especially my life, right now.
It’s a complicated balance, independence and reliance, and I am still learning just how to stack the scales. I live on the extremes of both. I was forced into; I fell into, being more independent than ever, being stronger than ever, more patient than ever and more understanding than ever. But there I also stand, on the other side. The side that reminds me how much help I need, the side that reminds me I can’t take out my recycling or do my own grocery shopping, and that while I wish I didn’t have to ask, I sometimes just do. The middle ground just will not do, I am learning.
Perhaps I will never get it down pat, but I am so grateful for the opportunity to try. It’s a lesson I possibly would learn no other way. And yes, I am spending all my days and nights on my couch with my leg elevated and I am missing nights in bars, games of Ultimate Frisbee, dinners in Seoul, weekend adventures, field trips with my Kindergarten, and trips to China, but I remind myself every day just what I am getting out of all this.
Ok, actually, I do really care a whole lot about missing those things. It sucks. And I really want to shave my leg and scratch the top of my foot, but I guess priorities change when you break your leg in a canyon in the Philippines. (I rescheduled my September zip-line trip down the Great Wall of China for March and I’m already planning Malaysia at Christmas.)
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