Costa Rica Journal - Thursday, 4-23-09

I awoke early in the morning and found that I had a very difficult time opening my right eye. After looking in the mirror, I saw to my horror, that my whole eyelid was swollen and only a sliver of my eye could peek out. I was in immediate distress and I resembled some kind of monster, or maybe that deformed guy from "Goonies".

I went right into the bedroom and woke Joe up, thinking I would be like that forever, if I didn't do something about it straight away. We both concluded that one of the many nasty bugs that frequented our home bit my eyelid sometime in the night while I was asleep. My eye didn't hurt, as I could move it around and see through the narrow slit that allowed for some very constricted vision. However, my puffed up eyelid felt uncomfortably tight and was probably 3 times the size it should have been.

Joe comforted me as best as he could, but then his mischievous side took over and he asked if he could take a picture. I denied his request in a huff, as there was no way I wanted this to be documented so I could look back on it later. I would much prefer to not have to see myself like this ever again. Going into Guatoso, which was our original plan, was out of the question. Hell, even going outside to walk around Cabanga was not going to happen! People already stared at me as it was, I didn't need them staring at me in horror, wondering if my husband beat me, or if I was coming down with a case of elephantitis.

So it was decided that the best thing for me to do was to put some ice on my eye, take an Ibuprofen and go back to sleep, as it was still quite early. I lay back and drifted back into slumber with a troubled mind, but in hopes that when I awoke, some of the swelling would go down.

A light knocking on the front door awoke us a few hours later. It was one of Fred's workers and he carried some bed plans and a note from Amy with him. I stayed hidden in the bedroom and hoped that Joe would handle whatever needed to be done on his own. Apparently the bed we had originally wanted to make was much too expensive and Joe had told Amy that we needed to put that project on hold until we could figure out what needed to be done.

Joe returned to me in the bedroom and told me that some of the swelling had indeed gone down. With a rush of hope, I ran into the bathroom and checked myself in the mirror. True, it was less swollen, but still very much puffed up. My lid felt slightly less tight than it used to, but still as if was filled with jelly when I touched it. I wrapped up a fresh ice cube in a cloth and went to go lay back down. As the day wore on, my eyelid gradually went down in size and I was relieved to know that this deformity was only temporary.