It's funny how having a large facial wound makes people react. I mean sure, you can see it. It's hard not to see. It sits there on my chin, on a throne of swollen tissue, and almost begs to be noticed. There is no getting away from it. Thai people just plain obviously look. Westerners do the 'flicking eye' routine where they get a sneaky peak in every now and again, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes just when they think you aren't looking. But the main difference I have noticed is that when you have a wound people can see, they want to give you advice on it.
Before I left the hospital they told me to clean the wound daily, and keep it dry. I bought myself some alcohol and iodine so I could accomplish this. Yet when the wound was getting no better, the advice started. All the advice was given with good meaning, and I mean no disrespect to the people that were giving it, I simply want to highlight the vast range of advice that I received.
If I was seen cleaning the wound I was told I was cleaning it too much and should let it scab. If there was slight scabbing on the wound I was told I wasn't cleaning it enough. I should only use alcohol, only use iodine, only use this other thing, not use any of them. Yet by far my favourite advice, to avoid eating chicken and eggs, was brought to my by a lovely Thai lady that saw me struggling with a little mirror to clean the wound, and so sat down and did it for me.
So you would think that with all this advice it would have been getting better. However, there was a definite lump just below the cut and it did look quite angry. I went back to the hospital to get my stitches out, they gave it another clean and sent me on my way. Nobody at the hospital seemed that concerned so I figured why should I be. I bought myself some more antibiotics and got on with my daily cleaning ritual.
Unfortunately for me, it wasn't getting any better at all. In fact, you could even say that it was getting worse. The day after my stitches came out the wound seemed to have opened up again. It was ugly enough looking when it was held together, now it was more a gaping maw, mocking me.
Days passed, the lump got harder, the wound redder, and the pain of the swelling getting further and further towards my throat. I drank a lot of beer, verbally vented my anger at the previous hospital for the lackluster job they did and decided in the morning I would go to a different hospital and see if they could fix the mess.