Down to 5 Lives

After camp, Erica, Leah and I went to Samaipata in the mountains to decompress for a bit while the rest of the crew headed back to the States. I had never traveled with someone with diabetes before and both Erica and Leah have it. I learned quite a bit on how to manage diabetes while abroad.

Every night before going to bed, Erica and Leah made sure to have some honey around in case they went low, which seemed quite often since we spent a lot of time hiking during the day. They would wake up in the middle of the night with a shaking body and just eat spoons of honey to get their blood sugar level back up higher. On our hikes, we made sure to bring the jar of honey, which is a lot lighter than bringing liters of coke and juice. After Erica told me of an emergency she had while hiking, I was a little worried for the both of them. However, I ended up with the medical emergency.

Erica, Leah, Steve a guy from Ireland we met, and I hiked up the surrounding mountains to see some waterfalls. We chose to forgo obtaining a guide because we thought with the four of us, and a hand-drawn map of the hike, we could figure out the trail. Sadly that was not the case. We found the waterfalls with no problems, but after hiking to the top of the mountain, we could not find the rest of the trail. Instead, we chose to make our own trail down the mountain. Unfortunately, my foot slipped on a rock that fell off the mountain as I followed it down head first. Steve later told me that he just saw this body falling down towards him and didn't know what was going on. Thankfully, my face hit a rock, and stopped my continued free fall. Surprisingly, I didn't break anything and only ended up with bruises, a bloody nose, and a swollen face. When Erica finally reached me, she asked what else hurt besides my face. I told her my knees hurt as well and asked her to get off of them since she was sitting on them while tending to my bloody face. Once the shock wore off, my nose felt like stinging ants had just crawled up it. Thankfully, Leah caught up to us to give me some ibuprofen to help with the pain.


Making our way down the mountain proved to be extremely difficult since we literally had to slide on our butts and stomachs to get down the really steep parts. Steve became my hero and supported me down especially since he thought I had suffered a slight concussion; my wobbly walking almost threw me off the mountain a second time. Many times on the hike down, Erica just cussed at the world since we weren't sure we would ever make it safely down. As the injured one, I tried to calm everyone down, maybe I was still in a state of shock. We really could have benefited from having a machete to cut down the branches and plants in the way or our new trail. We tried to yell for help to the worker men down below tending to their fields, but instead, they just chose to watch us slide around.

After 2 hours hiking down, we hit ground and took a bus to the hospital. I'm not sure I need overseas health insurance when my hospital visit only cost me $1.50. The doctor checked my nose, and because I don't really have a nose to begin with, I didn't break it. He gave me 3 different drugs which only cost $6 in total. Two weeks later now, my nose has healed and all the swelling and black and blue color is gone.

Leah left to go back to the States and Erica came with me to Cochabamba. Erica hasn't had any problems with her diabetes here although, she did drop a bottle of insulin on the floor and now needs more, which she can only get back in Santa Cruz. Whenever she does need insulin, she tells me that she needs to "shoot up", which I find funny.

The other accident I should mention involved a car crash in Santa Cruz. I sat in the back seat as Yanira who is blind in one eye from diabetes, drove me, Lourdes and Maggie in the rain to a home visit. Yanira drove right through the roundabout without looking the other way for oncoming traffic and hit a car heading in the perpendicular direction. She didn't want to stop to talk to the lady she just hit.However, so many cars honked at her because her light was about to fall off, that she finally got out of the car and yelled at the other woman for hitting her car. After exchanging phone numbers, we threw her front light in the back seat and headed off to the home visit. Maggie tried to get a taxi there since none of us wanted to get back in the car, but Yanira insisted on getting us there in her now beat up car, while still blind in one eye on that rainy day.