my big toe v. the unstoppable bamboo raft

i have ugly toes. they used to be cute... and then i turned three. things got progressively worse in taiwan, where i walked/biked for 16 hours a day in too-tight leather shoes. by the end of my mission in taiwan, i'd racked up three ingrown toenail surgeries and one completely lost toenail (after a surgery one day, i accidentally dropped a 30 lb. weight right on my toe). back to the states and dad took me into the ER and cut me up one more time for good measure. anyway, needless to say, my toes were still in a sad state of disarray by the time i got to china. as we floated the yulong river on bamboo rafts a couple days ago we kept having to go over these small dams (man-made or otherwise) that obstructed the river and slowed the path of the water. we got stuck atop one of these barriers just before the end of the trip and i jumped out to help our guide while shi jie stayed on the raft. the guide (mr. huang) set to pulling the raft from the front while i positioned a pole of bamboo underneath the thing so it could slide forward, rolling atop the bamboo as it came up onto the concrete. one thing led to another and i started pulling the raft from the side with my right hand while positioning the pole with the other hand. we gave one great lurch to try and pull the raft up and it leaped forward, slid onto the pole, and heaved right across my left big toe (the one with only half a toenail...it was still trying to grow back in after being smashed in taiwan). i jumped back to avoid being hurt and looked down at my toe. the nail was pointing straight up at me and the root was starting to bleed. cursing my bad luck, i bent down and ripped what remained of the nail right off my toe and tossed it into the water. hobbling over to where some other members of our group were working on getting their boats over the barrier, i called for some kleenex and a band-aid. i sat down, took a wad of kleenex from juliana, and started to staunch the bleeding. meanwhile, mr. huang started yelling at sun-blackened chinese guys on the shore to grab some 草药 (caoyao...or herbal medicine). a minute later, mr. huang comes running up and shoves a handful of gooey green gras onto my bleeding toe. i don't even want to know how it got as wet as it was...i'll assume he dipped it into the water and tore it up a bit. "this'll help!" he yelled, "it's chinese medicine! it'll make the swelling go down and reduce the pain!" really, it wasn't very painful at all, but to appease him and make him TAKE THE EFFING WEEDS OFF MY BLOODY TOE i politely told him, "wow! that helped really quickly! i'll go ahead and take it off now and put on a bandage." when he turned around, i washed it with as much bottled water as i could get my hands on and bandaged it up with some tissues and bandaids. the picture at the top of this webpage is me sitting outside the drugstore later that evening, after having bought some antibiotic ointment and proper bandages, fixing myself up while these sweet old ladies kept telling me i was doing it wrong. i thought it was classic. anyway. to alleviate my father's doubtless worrying at this point, i'll say the following: my toe is fine. it bled very little, hasn't swolen a bit, and i take care to keep bandaging it. i'll let you know if anything changes, but i don't anticipate any problems. it feels just fine.----------for those of you who noticed that not only am i bandaging my toe in that picture, but also my right knee, good job! the moral to be learned here is that you should not attempt to start or stop a fully-loaded (two people) scooter on certain types of terrain (in this case, coarse gravel). if you do, your knee will look like mine. that one's healing fine too.