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I Was Hooked!

Sunday, 05 July 2020 23:10

By Christel Kippenhan (seecktri.wordpress.com)

Without any triathlon race reports for this year, I thought I write about some other triathlon related stuff, sort of.

It’s Wednesday afternoon, time for my regular 3000 yds swim workout along the shoreline of Lake Movil Bay. I was on the third repetition of my 5 x 200 yd set (~ 2300 yds into my workout, and about 1/4 mile from my place) when I got a bit too close to a patch of reeds.  I brushed with...  

with my arm against a few of them and felt a small poke on my right forearm. As I looked down on my arm during the next pull, I saw something attached to my forearm just above the wrist. I stopped swimming and realized that it was a fish hook. So what now?

I played around with it a little bit. It must have been sitting in those reeds for a while because it was a little rusty. Good thing I had updated my tetanus shot during my last physical in May. It obviously had a barb, because it did not budge either way. At that point, I seriously contemplated if I could push it through and cut off the tip. But then, I did not have any tools or first aid supplies, and the tip of the hook was precariously close to a small vein in my forearm. I looked around. Well, my family physician lives about another 1/8 of a mile down the shoreline. Should I go there, hold out my arm, and say “Here Steven, take care of it. Would you please?”

There were two kids and two adults on a dock near me. I waded through the water over to them. We ended up pouring some hydrogen peroxide over the entry side and used some tape, electrical tape, to tape the hook and lure to my forearm to prevent it from moving around too much; and they then drove me back to my house. I put on some street clothes, jumped into my car, and drove to the walk-in clinic.  READ MORE