Ouch!!!! (Saturday)

This critter made my day - but not in a good way!  After a day spent working on the presentation/class I'll be giving at the Satellite campuses of UTP week after next, and having a delightful Skype call with Sewellyn,  I settled in to watch a movie and do a bit of beading to relax.  I was quietly minding my own business when, about 9 am, it felt a sharp bite on my leg.  I jumped up, and felt 2 more bites as I tried to shake whatever it was out of my pants and, since that wasn't being successful, stripping them off as fast as I could.  Out crawled the able beastie.

Stomp.  Die you!  (wiggle wiggle)  Stomp STOMP!  (wiggle)  Stomp STOMP STOMP (with vocals added and a couple of, well, let's just call them "R" rated words)  Finally, no wiggles.

BUT I felt my tongue getting tingly.  And maybe to swell?  Panic!

I raced into the bathroom and grabbed an Alavert - 10 mg of Loratadine in a Fresh mint flavored  disintegrating tablet.  The welts on my leg were getting bigger and bigger and I felt panic!  Here I am in Panama, with minimal Spanish and a numb tongue!  What to do?

Luckily, one of the wonderful people at Balboa Union Church, Emily Maduro, is a doctor.  I quickly grabbed my phone and "What's App'ed" her.  And, doubly luckily, she answered!  We had a back and forth conversation where I told her what had happened, and what was going on now.  At first, it seemed like I should go to an ER - fast!  I was afraid!  How to get there?  (Cab)  What about my bad Spanish?  (She said that a private hospital should have English speakers so not to worry about the issue of language.)  But I was really scared.  I think that made me feel tightness in the chest - but then, the welts started to go down and the pain eased, while the numbness of the tongue started to lessen as well.  I can't say it's totally gone now - but perhaps that's from something else.  Emily stayed with me until it seemed that the crisis had passed.  I am so incredibly grateful!

Whew!

Another lucky moment!  Thank you so much, Dr. Emily!  

Hola! Chica? (Friday)

(Friday's blog was written on Friday - but alas, a widespread outage of Internet service meant it could not be posted.  Nor could I watch a move or listen to music or anything else electronic.  So instead, I went to bed early.  Lovely!)

Today was a lovely day.  I had an early teleconference with Michael from Kenya who is planning to come to Panama next month for a vacay.  I'm hoping he can help my students with data analysis and with creating paper prototypes after the visits we'll be doing to improve the UTP website.  Then, I headed into work.  I had to be back home for a fabulous session in a virtual conference, "You in UX" put on by two of my favorite folks - Tracey Lovejoy and Gayna Williams.  The other sessions have been great too but this one, done by Donna Flynn, who I first worked with when she was at Microsoft and who is now at Steelcase.  It was inspirational.  She talked about being very intentional about her work and family life and had found ways to weave things together with her current post.  Donna is a great person, and it was wonderful to hear her so happy.

In between, I had a visit from Lydia.  She brought me the lovely hair ornament I've posted above.  It's a Tembleque, a head dress worn by women wearing the Pollera - the national dress of Panama for women on the Azuero Peninsula.  If only I had a bit more hair!  But I love it and am so touched by Lydia's generosity.