WARNING!!!! DON'T READ...

...if you are easily grossed out. 

I'm running out of pictures I haven't shown yet, so tonight's batch is from when I had staph infection a few months ago. I had gone stand-up paddling with my friends Blake and Lau at Hanalei Bay, and on a whim Blake decided to teach me to surf. Surfing on a stand-up paddleboard isn't really equal to surfing on a longboard, but I tried it anyway. I handed my paddle off to Blake, followed his instructions, and easily "surfed" the first wave I tried. I got a couple more, and then wiped out... on the reef. I didn't even notice I was bleeding until we had paddled out of the Bowl (it was dark by that time.)

Once back at Lau's house we cleaned out all of my various cuts with hydrogen peroxide. (And when I say "we," I mean Lau.) My knee (picture one) looked a lot worse than my ankle (picture two.)    

A few days later my knee was starting to heal, but my ankle swelled up, got all red and pussy, and became painful to walk on. 

A few days after THAT it looked... disgusting. And I could hardly walk. 

Can you tell how swollen my ankle was?:

So I made an appointment with the doctor for the next morning. But in the meantime, I went to Lau's house for band practice with him and Blake (yeah, we started a band), at which point Lau insisted that the wound needed to be cleaned, scraped out, de-pussed, etc. Blegh. It hurt too bad for me to touch it myself, so Lau donned some medical gloves and set to work. 

A blurry picture of me screaming in pain, taken by Blake:

Lau, all chill after performing the surgery:

After "doctor" Lau squeezed out all the pus, I felt SO MUCH better. Within a few hours the pain, pressure, and redness had lessened. The next morning I got an antibiotic and some topical cream... and within a few weeks the wound finally closed and began to heal. Even now it's still purplish-red and will probably scar (my knee is super scarred too, for the record.) Moral of the story: don't ever get a staph infection.