“Draw a line where the swelling stops,” the ER Doctor instructed the nurse, who produced a black sharpie and started drawing a circle around my now tree trunk sized calf. “If the swelling goes beyond that line,” the doctor said, “you might have MRSA that is spreading, so we may have to consider amputation. If it continues spreading to the rest of your body, you could die. But it could also be a staph infection, which we can treat with antibiotics and minor surgery.”
All of this for three-foot waves. Mick Fanning fought for his life versus a shark at J-Bay, Dusty Payne almost died at Pipeline, and multiple surfers met their demise at Maverick’s; but these are world class waves with well-documented risks. I faced the demise of a perfectly good appendage so I could catch waves the size of a small child (stillborn on the Hawaiian scale).
But let’s back up for a moment.
It rarely ever rains in San Diego. The sun has adopted us as its one true child and will protect us at all costs. If clouds get anywhere near our cities, you can count on the sun to helicopter parent the shit out of them, banishing the offending nimbus formations to Arizona or some other suburban hellscape. If that for some reason fails, all of the area Teslas combine forces to make an Elon Musk Voltron that fights Mother Nature and her “weather.” Never underestimate the powers of rich people with fuck tons of money that want to control the sun.
When it does rain, chaos ensues. Locals treat rain like East Coasters treat snow. Motorists slow to a crawl on the freeway not from blinding precipitation – the visibility is usually fine – but because the weather is suddenly not perfect. Their lives are ruined, and they are now unsure of how to cope with this weird liquid substance falling from the sky. So, they all drive 20 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone but still insist on cutting you off via crossing four lanes to get to their almost missed exit. All of our shitty driving antics are still on full display, just in soggy slow motion.
San Diego’s infrastructure, while well suited for earthquakes, is flaming hot garbage when it comes to rain and wind. Street lights stop working, the power goes out, and new lakes suddenly appear in the middle of major thoroughfares. On the “Things That Can Go Wrong in Southern California Scale,” this is ranked below fire and serial killer, but above bear attack. Most residents would have a vague idea of what to do in event of a bear encounter (make yourself look large and menacing while praying to all the major deities), but are baffled with conducting life during a minor rainstorm.
After a particularly heavy rain that was causing lots of flooding by the coast, I overheard a former co-worker’s son ask him if school was canceled for the rest of the week because the rain was so bad. Imagine growing up in a world where raining for more than a day triggers joyous thoughts of a school cancellation. San Diego is weird, man.
The drainage system in particular is poor. Aside from transforming my apartment into lakeside property overnight, all of the sewage and garbage from the streets and hillsides flows from the higher elevations directly into the ocean.
That’s right. The United States’ mainland surfing Mecca decided “All of this shitty brown water? Yeah, let’s just toss it in the ocean! It will be FINE! We definitely don’t need a water treatment plant. Also, let’s build a nuclear power plant right on the ocean! What’s the worst that could happen?”
When you are conditioned to think nothing truly horrific could happen, it of course happens. This is San Diego’s greatest danger: luring you into a false sense of warm, vitamin D soaked security. And then meth heads ransack your home or a distracted CEO sideswipes you in their BMW on the freeway the day after you finally got a nice base tan.
With sunshine filled ignorance, I too fell victim to San Diego’s trappings.
It had been a week since there was any swell. In other parts of the country, this is not a significant time of wavelessness. I can feel every east coaster screaming “TRY THE ENTIRE MONTH OF JULY” at me from three thousand miles away. California is different. A couple of days without decent waves is a catastrophe. An entire week is a crisis requiring government intervention.
A storm on Thursday brought an inch of rain. Medical officials warn to stay out of the water for at least 72 hours following a significant rain event. But on Friday, the rain and wind ceased, leaving clean, fun waves in the storm’s wake. To hell with what medical officials say. I am young and healthy! I’ll be fine. Avoiding warnings is an easy thing to do when it seems nothing bad ever happens. I surfed Friday afternoon and slept well that night, my appetite for waves being sufficiently satisfied.
Saturday, I rolled out of bed and collapsed. Confused, I tried standing, but immediately crash landed. Any weight that I tried to put on my right foot sent an excruciating pain up my leg. Looking down at my feet revealed that my left foot looked normal, but my right had swollen to the size and appearance of a clown’s shoe. Red and puffy, not fun and squeaky. I also had a fever, and if I have learned anything from diagnosing myself via WebMD articles over the years, it’s that any symptoms accompanied by a fever are extremely bad news requiring more medical attention than painkillers and a nap. I assumed death was imminent.
My girlfriend took me to the emergency room. Having never been in an ER before, I assumed it was going to be like it was on TV: a non-stop stream of stretchers flanked by doctors coming through the door, with each patient either bleeding, dying, or pregnant. There would probably be at least a half dozen gunshot wounds. Codes of every color of the rainbow would be frantically shouted. Hopefully, John Stamos would make an appearance at some point to calm everyone’s jangled nerves. Or maybe J.D. and Turk would be around to lighten the mood with shenanigans!
Everyone seated in the ER waiting room was relatively calm. No one appeared to be dying. The triage nurse that evaluated me did not yell out any codes, but instead smiled and made small talk as she took my vitals. We must have just missed Dr. Stamos.
But there was blood. While we waited to see a doctor, a gentleman with both hands heavily bandaged and bleeding sat down across from us. His shirt was bloodstained. He looked tired. My girlfriend and I did not say a word to him, but he was ready to chat.
“Man, fucking guys ruined my shirt with their blood,” he volunteered, staring directly at us. I did not want to talk to him, but I was also not going to ignore someone that had no qualms spilling the blood of others.
He proceeded to tell us a Grand Theft Auto-esque story about how his sister was involved with a gang member that mistreated her. Our new waiting room buddy recruited a couple of friends to help him have a “conversation” with said sister-mistreating gang member. The friends bailed, but the gang member got word of this and brought a couple of his gang member friends to assist in a discussion surely centered around what chivalry means in 2019 and not at all about ripping each other’s eyeballs out. Mummy Hands went full Rambo and met them anyway. It was apparently one against four, and the four had knives and brass knuckles. He was confident that he downed two of the guys before getting knocked out himself. That was the last thing he remembered before his cousin found him and dropped him off at the ER. He had a convenience store bag filled with bottles of Coke. Fighting a horde of dudes works up quite the thirst, I suppose.
He was also a semi-pro MMA fighter worried that his hands were considered deadly weapons and he would, therefore, be charged with assault with a deadly weapon, as opposed to the assault he was already charged with. He also had a fight scheduled in Vegas the following weekend.
Instead of explaining all of this to a lawyer, he asked us questions. What did we think? Did he do the right thing? Could he be charged? Is it technically self-defense if you walk into a dark alley looking for a fight with people you arranged to meet? We became his legal counsel. All of our answers consisted of “Yes, you did the right thing, but you should definitely speak to a lawyer.” We lied our faces off. This semi-professional crazy person was liable to destroy us if we said the wrong thing.
Unsurprisingly, Mummy Hands got called in to see a doctor before I did. I would admit the fighter before the clown too.
A few minutes later, it was my turn to head back to see a doctor. I hobbled a few feet down the hallway, bracing myself against the wall. The journey ratcheted my pain meter up to 11. I asked the nurse for a wheelchair.
*******
“He has been crying for you ever since he got here,” the ER doctor said to my girlfriend. I had not done such a thing. I merely asked if my girlfriend, who had been patiently sitting in the waiting room bored out of her mind in a pre-smartphone era, could come in and be with me. Hospitals need their drama, I suppose.
I was hooked up to one machine monitoring my vital signs and another administering a steady flow of antibiotics into my arm via a needle. A second needle was stuck in my hand for fluids. I may have the purposes of each needle flip-flopped, but regardless, the various tubes and wires attached to my person indicated this was a serious medical issue.
“It looks like he had a small cut on his ankle, which became infected after he went surfing too close to a rainstorm. The bacteria in the water got into his system, leading to the infection overnight,” the doctor explained. “We are going to slice him open, then send him home with you.”
The nurse handed my girlfriend some paperwork and more antibiotics, instructing her to keep an eye on me and return immediately if my symptoms became worse. The doctor applied a local anesthetic to my ankle, produced a small scalpel and, true to his word, sliced my ankle open. I didn’t feel anything. “This should help expel the infection,” he said. They wheeled me to the exit and set me free to hobble around the real world.
This next part is admittedly gross, so I am going to treat this like a choose your own adventure:
If you like gore-free happy endings, then stop here! Your hero survived his brush with death with all original appendages intact! As a bonus, he even learned a valuable lesson. Now healthy and infection free, he spends his days slaying waist high waves, always waiting at least 72 hours after a significant rain event. Role credits!
If you are the type of sick psychopath in search of the violent, blood-soaked conclusion to our tale (aka, the truth), then read on!
The next day I spent on my girlfriend’s couch, with my feet elevated and a steady stream of coffees and snacks appearing by my side. Throbbing deadly infection aside, it was not a bad way to live.
Around mid-afternoon, the urge to leave engulfed me. Despite having my every need tended to, I needed to be alone somewhere. Immediately.
Think back to when you were a pimply faced teen. Do you remember sensing when it was time for a pimple to be popped? As if it was some sort of living creature running around beneath your skin, frantically searching for an exit. You were unable to focus on anything else except an overwhelming urgency to evacuate something from your body that does not belong.
Now take that feeling and multiply it by the panicked determination that washes over you when explosive diarrhea takes hold of your small intestine. That’s what this felt like. Something was brewing in my foot, and no amount of comfort and love was going to stop it from releasing itself into the world.
I made a half-assed excuse about needing to do a vague something or other to my girlfriend and hobbled at top speed towards the door. My apartment was 5 minutes away, and I thankfully had my car, so I did not have to leave too many strangers on the sidewalk wondering if I ran into Tonya Harding’s hitmen in the alley.
Once home, I rushed into my room and closed the door. I was unsure what sort of horrors would be unleashed, so I thought it best to not share them with my roommates.
I contorted my body in a way that provided both hands with good access to my infected foot. My acne-ridden teenage senses engaged. I probed the sliced open area for the best angle of attack, applied a little pressure and, sure enough, it felt just like a gnarly pimple from the days of yore. Adults would always tell you that if you try to pop a pimple, you risk getting scared. Fuck that, I was already sliced open by a sharp blade. My fingers could not possibly do any worse.
I squeezed.
A pea-sized ball of pus rocketed out of my ankle. (I never found it, so I assumed it hit the ceiling), followed by an eruption of blood and pus. They did not come out separately, as they usually do with acne, but were birthed into the world as a mixture. Light pink in color with swirls of white pus, it looked like my foot was dispensing a strawberry milkshake.
It kept flowing. I grabbed multiple paper towels to mop up the mess now pooling around my ankle. Each time I thought a satisfactory amount of infection dessert had come out of me, I pressed a little harder, igniting another discharge of bloody goo.
I was disgusted but unable to stop myself. Every emission brought additional relief. This must be what cows feel like when they get milked. Please keep grabbing my udders, I have so much more to give to you.
The entire ordeal took about 15 minutes. I was worn out from fighting and decided to take a break, get to my feet, and see how my ankle felt.
I stood up and felt like nothing had ever happened. I jogged around my room. I stretched. I pressed my foot up against the wall. The pain was gone! I had driven out the infection.
Realizing the severity of expelling the contents of a staph infection onto my body, I showered until I had used up all the hot water in our apartment complex. Exhausted and the cleanest I had been in years, I went to bed.
When I returned to the ER the next day, the doctor was impressed. “You just massaged it out, huh?” he asked. I nodded, sparing him the long version of the story. He scrunched his face a bit. Doctors (especially ER doctors) have seen liquids seeping out of every inch of the body for reasons they definitely did not cover in medical school, so a pus evacuation doesn’t register a reaction from a professional physician. I’m pretty sure he was disappointed that I didn’t provide more action. His scrunched face said, I got all excited for a deadly infection, and all I got was this healthy, try hard do it yourselfer. John Stamos would never have to deal with such inconveniences.
Satisfied with my efforts, I was told to go home and finish taking the antibiotics, just in case.
The moral of the story is: listen to medical professionals. If they recommend staying out of the water for a certain timeframe, do it. After a lot of rainstorms, there is a calm the following day, usually accompanied by a swell increase. It can be really appetizing to go out for a surf, which lots of people do and they turn out fine. It’s a numbers game. But after rolling the dice and losing, I would rather take a few more surf less days than giving birth to another demonic infection. I strongly encourage you to do the same, unless you want random body parts morphing into Linda Blair and projectile vomiting a strawberry milkshake all over your bedroom.