Nepal, meet Left Arm. Left Arm, meet Nepal.

  After 11 days of hiking on the Annapurna circuit, it was finally Friday, October 13th.  The day I've been waiting for for 6 weeks.  The day my left arm gets to be a part of the world again.  No more Left Arm solitary confinement in blue cast prison. No, from here on out, left arm would get all the good things again: sunshine, fresh air, a long-overdue shower.  Just a few pesky things to get out of the way before Left Arm's Emancipation.  It turns out the Friday the 13th-bad luck thing, also true in Hindu-Buddhist countries.  First, we took a flight from Jomsom, "big" village on the Circuit, back to Pokhara.  Now normally I wouldn't think twice about flying, but just a few weeks ago, the exact same type of plane crashed taking trekkers to the Everest region.  And the airport doesn't exactly make you feel secure.  Not when the airline ticket officers are wearing knock-off North Face fleeces no name tag in sight and the security officers give your backpack an outside squeeze then slap a "security checked" sticker on your bag.  Never showed my passport to anyone.   So then we get on the plane, a Twin Otter, and take off climbing steeply into the blue sky to avoid a lesser Annapurna foothill.  For all my anxiety though, the plane ride was smooth as can be.  25 minutes later we landed back in Pokhara to the heat and humidity I'd forgotten about.  Left arm didn't forget.  She started to sweat immediately.  I was so excited.  The cast will be off in a mere hour or two I thought!  Off by lunch time to enjoy a celebratory beer.  But then I couldn't find my backpack in "baggage claim".  And then I was trying to keep Jordan from going ape shit on a tiny middle-aged Nepali man, screaming for some reason in a Southern accent "Find that f*cking bag!  You better find that bag!"  Crap was all I thought, I don't give a hoot about this backpack, but now it looks like Left Arm will be staying locked up for the rest of the morning.  We were led to an office where some airline lady explained that my bag was removed from the plane because the plane was over weight limits. Hmm, curious because all our bags were weighed before we got on the plane.  So after an hour of sitting in this office, Jordan giving a kill-stare to the poor ladies, my bag was miraculously returned to me!  After cabbing back to our hotel, ditching our bags, and me scolding Jordan about not being a hothead and thinking he can go "Big American" when there's a problem, we finally were off to get my cast cut off!  Now before we left the States, we researched a travelers clinic in Nepal that seemed pretty legit, recommended by the State Department and everything.  But since Kathmandu is kind of a nightmare and it would mean even more days with the cast, I decided to just get the cast cut off in Pokhara.  Surely, as the gateway to the Annapurnas, they would have a real-deal hospital.  But after talking to several people in town, I decided to go to a private-pay clinic that claimed to treat orthopedic and traumatic injuries.  Jordan and I both figured, if it claimed to be an ortho practice, then surely they will have a cast saw and an x-ray machine.  So Celestial Healthcare would be Left Arm's savior.  I had a short consultation where I was told Dr. Gupta could cut my cast off and get my x-rays, no problem, just $50.  What a deal! But they didn't have a cast saw, so blue cast would have to be removed by hand, with what appeared to be a short hack-saw blade.  So that's how I spent about 2.5 hours on Friday the 13th, laying on a dirty exam table, while two Nepali men, one with the blade, another with a pair of scissors, sawed and hacked and stabbed away at blue cast.  Neither of them were doctors, and neither of them knew to put the blunt end of the scissors towards my skin.  To be honest, I really thought, I was going to have my brachial artery severed.  Contingency plans were running though my mind:  Is there a tourniquet close by?  Hopefully they have semi-sterile gauze to cover what will surely be a squirting puncture wound.  And then my planning was interrupted because I could feel the blade sawing close to my skin, having gone all the way through the plaster.  It was actually Jordan who finally muscled the cast off, prying it open where they'd been sawing for two hours.  Needless to say, it was an experience I'll never forget. But once it was finally off, I've never been more relieved.  And then Dr. Gupta, my "orthopedic surgeon" told me we would drive in his car to the nearest hospital to get x-rays done of my wrist.  Because, they don't have an x-ray machine.  So off we went, but at the hospital, the x-ray tech was at lunch.  Apparently, if you have a life-threatening emergency in Nepal, it will have to wait until after lunch.  No one could do my x-ray.  So to 2 more hospitals we went before we finally found one that had a x-ray tech willing to do my films.  As for describing the hospitals, well, lets just say it makes Harborview's ER look like a royal palace of cleanliness and medicine.  But finally, after 4+ hours of hand sawing my cast off and an impromptu tour of Pokhara's hospitals, Left Arm was now free.  But feeling like it won't ever work the same way again.  I know I'm exaggerating.  Its getting better slowly everyday.  But I still can't flip my wrist over to face palm-down.  Permanent low-five is still in action.  But Left Arm is now clean and fresh smelling, and I'm working on the awful reverse farmer's tan I got on the trek.

Since then, Jordan got the first tummy bug of the trip, we came back to Kathmandu from Pokhara, and went to a Bhaktapur for a couple days.  Its also Dashain festival right now in Nepal, a national Hindu festival that involves a lot of partying and animal sacrifices.  I've had my fill of passing herds of goats, ducks, and water buffalo on their death march to the temples. Tomorrow we are heading out to go trek around Everest for about 3 weeks.  Wish us luck!

Your Scrawny Left Arm friend,

Hillary