We were all enjoying a lazy Sunday at home, Josh was visiting his Grandma in Puerto del Carmen and I decided to remind everyone that there was a house in need of renovation so after a round of aaawwww we got our tools together, changed into shoes as flip flops just don’t protect your feet and piled into the car.
On route we stopped to pick up a spade and more gloves from the garage, the señora at the garage always treats us like friends but recently we are getting the royal treatment, it seems to be since we told her about the new property and she’s realised that means more business for her!
This was Mike’s first attempt at chopping down the cactus and after unlocking the house and retrieving the rest of our tools he was hard at work with the machete. After a few minutes of hard labour he stopped and exclaimed this is harder than I thought! It’s not just cutting the cactus but you have to pick up the pieces and load them into the wheelbarrow and dump them across the garden. The wheelbarrow already had a puncture and we couldn’t find any tyre weld to repair it so we were wobbling across the picón trying not to drop the load. Lucy was enjoying cutting the prickly pear cactus next to ours, it’s not as vicious as it has a few spikes and once you’ve cut it down you can pick it up.
Now since we’ve started work at the house I have been taking a full first aid kit as I just knew we would have an accident at some point, little did I know that I would be the first casualty! We had been working for a couple of hours and our hands were starting to hurt when I chopped a large piece of cactus and a whole branch of it toppled towards me, I stepped back and it fell at my feet. As I was loading it into the wheelbarrow I noticed that my skin looked funny in between my ankle and shin and on further inspection noticed a spike sticking out of my leg, I pulled this out – it was about 2 inches long, and thought no more about it but as I moved to walk away I realised there was still a problem. I looked at my leg again and saw 3 puncture holes, underneath one of them there was something moving under the skin?! I asked Mike to look and he said there was a piece of cactus spike stuck under my skin, we could just about feel the tip of it so Mike said that’s enough for today and and I limped back to the car feeling very sorry for myself.
Once we were home I couldn’t get the spike out of my leg, we tried hot water and needles etc but it just seemed to go deeper. I was a bit worried about what to do as I couldn’t walk properly, the spike seemed to be catching each time I tried to walk. I braved it out during Sunday and Monday but after spending the day in work limping around the place I came to the conclusion that I would have to go to the doctors and have it dug out. People kept telling me that the spikes were poisonous and you can catch all sorts of diseases off them – just what you need when you can’t walk and are worried what to do anyway. There are some seriously big ugly spiders and webs on the cacti so I was already thinking there might be baby spiders hatching in my leg! Luckily we had to stop at the pharmacy anyway so I asked them what to do and they said just put this cream on called Belladonna and overnight the splinter will come out. Fantastic! I headed home with the cream and duly applied it to my leg and bandaged it expecting it to work miracles and the spike would be out in the morning.
I awoke with anticipation and peeled the bandage off but there was no splinter and as soon as I walked it was agony still. I kept applying the cream for the next couple of days but to date the spike has not come out, I can walk and drive again now some 2 weeks later but the spike may be a permanent reminder of our house renovation!