Mexico follow up

God I hate it when the universe kicks me in the nuts!

I've procrastinated writing a follow-up to my initial Mark s Mexican Message for so long that apparently the powers-that-be ran out of patience and created a situation whereby I had nothing but time on my hands. I, along with a ragtag collection of aging once-upon-a-time athletes play in a flag-football bush league against all Mexican teams once a week. Last Saturday I had the misfortune of being involved in a helmet-on-helmet collision without the benefits of the aforementioned helmet. My opponent was knocked unconscious, a blessing in disguise really, as he thus avoided having to watch our backyard paramedic piece his eyes and cheek back together again. I survived the collision with little more than a blinding headache and the temporary loss of my color vision (for 2-3 minutes all I could see was green). Regardless, once the rag-doll Mexican was dragged off the field, and dirt kicked over the blood stains, we resumed play. I didn t have long to wait for the karmic wheel of justice to seek its retribution. Three plays later, while gamely chasing down the quarterback, I slip innocently, or temporarily lose consciousness still not sure which occurred, only to find myself lying in a crumpled heap in the dirt in searing agony, the nauseating sound of breaking bones still ringing in my ears. I knew I was fucked!

The good news is that we had a semi-trained paramedic playing on the other team; the bad news is that he thought I had a dislocated shoulder. Each successive attempt to re-locate my shoulder resulted in a further grinding of my fragmented collarbone, until I could take no more and demanded that my teammates take me directly to the hospital. Mexico is not known for its smooth roads and I suspect my brother-in-law Craig harbors some deep subconscious resentment towards me for reasons I have yet to comprehend because it appeared, from my overly sensitive perspective, that we managed to hit each and every pot-hole and speed-bump between the field and the hospital. I mentioned at one point that he might want to turn around because he appeared to have missed one, and I didn t want to see his perfect record shattered (as I soon discovered was the fate of my collarbone).

People often ask me if I m concerned about the quality of Mexican healthcare. Consider this; within 10 minutes of arriving in Emergency I had a heaven-sent nurse injecting an elephantine-sized syringe filled with joy-juice into my arm. 20 minutes later I was looking at an x-ray of my fragmented collarbone and three hours after that I was in surgery having my clavicle reassembled. Five screws and a metal plate later I was good as new. The next morning I woke up in a private room, with an enjoyable breakfast before me and a constant stream of nurses and doctors periodically attending to my every want. Contrast my experience to Kylan s a few months ago when he blew an eardrum on a flight to Vancouver. With blood coming out of his mouth on descent, and an ambulance waiting for him on the tarmac, Kylan was in bad shape. Yet when the paramedics deposited him at Children s Hospital Sharka was told there was a six hour wait to see a pediatrician, at BC s premier hospital for children, with a child in obvious distress. Nice. I ll take Mexico s two tiered healthcare system over BC socialized system any day of the week (and especially if I have a fractured collarbone millimeters from daylight).

In any event, the lesson to be learned here is that one can only shirk one s responsibilities for so long before the universe brings one back around to the proper order of things. That and procrastination leads to bodily injury.

Broken bones aside, the balance of our time here in Mexico has been fantastic; though not without its bumps in the road (to borrow from my previous story). When I originally cooked up the idea of coming to Mexico my justifications for doing so were part adventure, part family bonding and part running away from a career path I no longer enjoyed. Mexico, I felt, would provide me the opportunity and perspective to make some new choices, as well as develop an enviable third-world tan. And while down here I had an opportunity to recoup some of my expenses working with my sister-in-law at a five star resort selling vacation memberships (politically correct term for time-share)

Mexico follow up

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