WTG Devin

The subtitle of my blog (wow that sounds presumptuous – who needs a subtitle? I feel like I should be wearing a monocle) used to be “traveling without insurance,” as I did lots of stupid and entertaining things in the year or so I was uninsured – like boxing, hitchhiking, mountain climbing, teaching kids, and playing tag with scorpions in my sleeping bag in the desert. As one can see, that subtitle has changed – I now have coverage. Whoo! This is a good thing, because as soon as I got coverage the world was like, “Fair game!” and started throwing diseases right at my face.

Remember back when swine flu broke out in Mexico? I do, because I was in Yuma, Arizona at the time. For all of you who are uncertain of Yuma’s proximity to Mexico, on the highway out of town there’s a sign that says, “Mexico, next exit.” I wasn’t super worried about swine flu because I was going on a canoe trip down the Colorado river from Walter’s Camp to Martinez Lake Resort (aka sketchy mcsketchville), and probably wouldn’t be running into swine flu cases in the middle of the desert.

You may be thinking, “Cool! A canoe trip through the desert,” and yes, it would have been cool, except I had to make sure a bunch of 16 year-old ADD kids didn’t drown. If you think regular 16 year-olds are a joy to work with, wait until you guide a dozen overpriveleged, severely insecure ADD kids with parent issues down a river. Sooo much fun. A good 50% of them were incapable of things like tying simple knots (like shoelace knots), washing dishes, and not breathing through their mouths. One of my kids was always throwing rocks. In a canoe. On a river. Where do you find rocks in the middle of a river? Another one thought that it was a good idea to yell at a guy fishing on the riverbank: “Hey! Why don’t you go to school and get a real life!” The fisherman’s response: “Why don’t you find a rope and hang yourself!” Fisherman 1, Kid 0.

After a few days of lifting metal canoes full of water over my head we got to Picacho State Park, homeland of my ancient enemies: mosquitoes. Words cannot express my hatred for them. One night while sleeping in the desert I was bitten on the lip by a spider. I woke up and my lip was swollen and my heart was doing fun slow down now go really fast exercises, but I was so tired I was like, meh, then went back to sleep. I will gladly take poisonous spider over mosquitoes any day, because poisonous spiders will LET YOU GO TO SLEEP. Mosquitoes never stop whining in your ear and sucking your blood (in other words, worst girlfriends ever). At Picacho I was overjoyed to experience my first mosquito bite on a zit, which left a scar on my face for four months. Surprisingly, I was not the worst hit by the mosquitoes. This one kid, who refused to put on a) bug spray and b) a shirt, out of some misguided attempt to impress a girl, was reacting so badly to his thirty-plus mosquito bites that his right eye swelled shut. Not so easy to make out now, is it Mr. Depth Perception?

At the end of every canoe trip we do a sunrise paddle, which means we wake the kids up at 4 am, have them pack up their tents and gear into the canoes by headlamp, and then get out on the water before it starts to get light. This is a beautiful and amazing tradition, and if you lay on your back across your canoe, it actually looks like the sun is falling into the sky. But I digress. Four in the morning is too early to motivate kids who haven’t slept at all (I got up to go to the bathroom around one and I could see a good dozen teenagers making out, and the next day one of the kids said they had been paid twenty dollars to keep quiet about something they had seen).

The last day on the river was filled with these two phrases repeated 500 million times: “How much longer until we get there?” and “Why am I such a dumbass?” (okay, maybe just the first one). Also an emergency stop where two of my kids dug holes and pooped in what appeared to be a Native American religious site. After getting to Martinez Lake and sending the kids on their merry way home, one of my co-workers and I carpooled to Joshua Tree, where we split a bottle of tequila while she told me her life story. The next day I thought it might be a good idea for my out of shape self to go for a forty minute run with my friend cute-as-a-button Molly, who was training for a marathon, and then take a cold shower from a hose in a parking lot.

I know all of this may sound unrelated to getting diseases thrown at my face, but the point I am trying to make is that I was not in a good place. Recap: zit/mosquito bite, aggravating week of doom, no sleep, physically exhausted, and not enough alcohol. Anyways, so I’m teaching on Catalina Island, and I’m swimming in the ocean, having a grand old time, and I’m like huh, that’s weird, why is there water and little rocks leaking into my left eye? I go the bathroom and discover that the left side of my face is f’d. I can’t wink with my left eye, and when I blink my left eye is a wee bit slower than the right. My first thought is, did a week of ADD munchkins give me a stroke? But the rest of my left side is fine, so I talk to my co-workers and Miss Sarah (aka Sharkfoot) tells me, “Yeah, that looks like Bell’s palsy. I had it in high school. You should definitely get it checked out, because it could be something really serious.” Bell’s palsy is a paralysis of a facial nerve that results in an inability to control muscles on one side of the face – for example, on the second day of symptoms, I lost the ability to whistle because I couldn’t purse my lips on the left side of my face.

My situation is this – I’m in a cove that’s a twenty minute boat ride from the nearest town, which has laughable medical care, which is an hour ferry ride from Long Beach near Los Angeles, where I have no place to stay or any idea where a hospital is, and I’m supposed to be directing my first program the next day on Catalina. Fortunately my laziness doesn’t extend to taking care of myself. In the next eighteen hours I take a ferry to Long Beach (setting up doctor’s appointments before 6pm in the twenty minute window my cell phone works as the boat gets closer to land), find a parking garage I’ve never been to, find my co-worker’s car, call my friend in New York and see if I can stay at their parent’s place in Long Beach, get to my friend’s house and look online for hospitals, go to an emergency care place that closes in twenty minutes and get diagnosed, get my prescription filled, solve world hunger, and then make it back to the ferry the next morning and then to Catalina accompanied by a forty-dolphin salute. I didn’t even miss a day of work.

It’s a good thing I know lots of amazing people whom I call my friends and who for some reason tolerate my annoying presence, otherwise I’m pretty sure I would be dead by now. Oh, and that “something serious” Sarah mentioned Bell’s palsy might be? Lyme disease, brain tumor, or permanent paralysis of one side of the face. Moral: get health insurance.