Toe Massage

Some people think living in a third-world country can be dangerous. And Nick couldn't agree more. First he "severely sprained" his finger playing soccer. And now this!

Yep, Nick is hobbling around on a crutch. But it's not as bad as you may think.

A few month's ago a pig stepped on his boot while he was cleaning poop out of a stall in the pens. We didn't think much about the pain in his little toe until it didn't get better. Finally, we couldn't take the whining anymore. So we took him a doctor in Tegucigalpa last week. 

Nick got another souvenir of our time in Honduras to match this one. If this trend continues, we'll have a portrait of Nick's entire skeleton by the time we leave next year!

The good news is that Nick's little piggy isn't broken. The bad news is that there appears to be some invisible injury to the nerves. The toe hurts a lot, as evidenced by Nick's dramatic howling. So now, we're off to town three times a week to have a 45 minute toe massage. Yep, a toe massage. 

When she woke up this morning, I'll bet this poor woman never imagined that she'd be massaging the stinky toe of red-headed gringo boy!

In addition to the "therapy" on his toe, the school nurse, Esther, is also performing daily massages and has relieved Nick from his work duties in the pig barns for the time-being. While this treatment plan seems to be agreed upon by all the medical professionals involved, the toe's prognosis is a mystery. So we're stuck keeping up this ridiculous toe massage regime until something changes. Oh well. Nick is enjoying the attention, even if it includes the occasional piggy joke and a whole lot of chuckles!