Tuesday evening, 6:00, Mary's basement.
At the time I was feeling a bit strange. One of those feelings you get after you've been around a lot of people for a significant amount of time, and then they all suddenly leave. It isn't exactly loneliness, and it isn't fatigue. I suppose it's just an aura of uneasiness that no one can ever really describe.
I couldn't just sit around and feel bad for myself so I decided to have some fun with a container of wax I happened to have in my room.
By the way, Andrea informed me not to tell people I was "playing with wax" because they would get a very wrong image of what was going on.
Uhhhhhhh……
I popped the container in the microwave and punched in what I believe was 20 seconds. Here’s where the big problem comes in. I’m pretty positive I put in 20 seconds, but after all the shock and all that, I started doubting myself and thought I may have made the mistake of putting in 2 minutes. You see, the mary’s microwave doesn’t have a working screen. The screen just constantly flickers lights of nonsense. I also discovered later that the microwave doesn’t stop when it should. I found this out more or less through a breakfast mission with Ari when we were nuking bacon. It burned. Also, 1 second equals 10 to this machine.
So, I threw that container in and ran to the bathroom. When I returned, the specimen was done cooking away, as it should have been (though I didn’t realize it had been in longer) so I opened the door and...
SMOKE!
Smoke started billowing out of the door, so hoping to not cause the fire alarm to sound, I grabbed the container and pulled it out causing most of the substance inside to spill over onto my hand and all over the countertop.
Tragic as it sounds, I can still smell the wax and feel the burning liquid splashing over my hand.
This is about the time shock occurred. Now, when things like this happen to me, I don’t respond with screams. It was more like a painful groan that viciously fought it’s way out of the murky pit of my soul. I threw my hand under water in the faucet in hopes that the wax would still be liquid and would wash off, but to no avail. Somehow my mind told me that I needed to run into the bathroom instead of staying in the kitchen to try to save myself. So I ran to the bathroom and peeled the wax and my flesh off the area around my thumb, much like you do a sticker off a glass surface.
When something like that happens to you your mind is very one sided and can only focus on little details one at a time. I knew I was in terrible pain, but instead of thinking to call security or grab an RA, I just knew I had to get a hold of Ricky. He was what I needed at the time.
I tried calling him a few times fully aware that he was in a 3 hour class. All this time I was running around the academic building hoping to find him. I ended up sending him a text message that read “Help”. That was so cruel, but I couldn’t do anything else at the time. I really hate thinking about that. Since there was no response and I couldn’t seem to find the room, I actually went to the 2nd floor lab and looked up the room number online, all the while slowly slipping out of shock and realizing how much agony I was in. It hurt so much worse when I stopped moving. There were a few other people in the lab at the time, but I guess they didn’t here me moaning as I sat there (I didn‘t want them to notice anyway).
On my way towards the room I ran into Ricky in the hall as he was attempting to call me. It really kills me to remember how scared he looked as we met. It was a legitimate state of fear, and it really was an emergency, I just feel like it was horrible for me to make him worry like that. Although, if I had said, “Oh, I just burned my hand, could you help me please?” I don’t think it would have made anything better.
He asked what happened, but at the time I couldn't think consistently enough to explain what I was doing. Also because I was mildly embarrassed about the whole circumstance.
We journeyed to the health office which we quickly discovered was closed. Apparently the school assumes that health issues do not occur after 4:00 PM. Next option, counseling center next door.
Ricky got someone's attention while I leaned against the wall holding my hand up and whincing; there was only one lady in the whole building it seems. The lady came over to me and babbled some garbage, asking what happened and blah blah blah. I think it was when I said, "wax" that I absolutely died inside and began sobbing. Her pitiful response to my breakdown was, "Shh, it's okay. You'll be okay", in which I responded with what I find was the proper way to deal with the situation. This particular way was saying, "No, I'm not okay. This hurts" - angrily.
She had me sit down while she called the security office. I just sat there while and cried out of pain, shock, frustration, and fear. The lady returned with instructions to travel back up the hill to the security office to let them handle the unfortunate issue.
About this time, 20 minutes had already passed since the wax boiled over my flesh. My hand was oozing some horrid smelling liquid substance and was positively tearing my insides to shreds.
There are two truly horrendous parts of this whole experience. One being the thought that I could have restricted mobility in my right hand, and the other being the sickening smell of dead flesh.
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Just now I closed my cell phone and dropped it on my desk as my tear ducts remembered how to function. My only explanation is that my body is physically exhausted with people being inconsiderate and insensitive. It isn't like I conciously decided, "okay, I'm real mad at the whole world now and it's time for me to cry." My body just wanted to let me know it was tired of being treated poorly. The phone call was to the hospital where they cut me off mid-sentence (again) while I was trying to explain myself, and they very rudely told me they don't give refills and if I wanted more pain killers I would have to see my personal physician (which I guess just sucks for me because I'm only four hours from home) or go back to the hospital for them to look at me.
Yeah.
Like looking at the burn is going to tell them how much I hurt. ONLY I CAN TELL THEM I'M IN PAIN.
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I'm going to continue this tomorrow. I need to get some rest so I can take on the tomorrow thing.
Also, so you don't get confused, most of this entry was written quite a while ago. I'll try to finish it up as soon as I can!
-Lisa
Victim pt. 1
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Posted by Lisa at 11:08 PM
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