Remember how I told you to notice the photo of me in the previous post? Well….that’s because it’s the only picture of me looking normal for the entire trip. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes after we arrived at Euphorbia, I tripped and did a face-plant onto the cement walkway! This was about 15 feet from the door to our villa. My hands were full with our luggage, so I literally landed on my face, smashing my nose.

I have no idea if I broke my nose, but I sure heard it go CRUNCH when I landed on it. 🤪 After the impact, I was stunned and didn’t even realize I was pouring out blood until Jeff and Tips told me I was bleeding. Yikes! I had a ton of blood all over my jacket. Amazingly, the staff at Euphorbia were able to wash my jacket and get all the blood out of it.

Tips did a great job in response to my fall. He got the first aid kit and had me putting ice on my face immediately. And he told me how to stop the nose bleed. At this point, he and Jeff had helped me up and got me into the villa so I could sit down on a chair.

Here is what my face looked like right after the fall. Not too bad, just a swollen nose.

Little did I know that I would turn all kinds of colors after this!

The lodge manager, BG, was very nice and very helpful with this issue. He had a paramedic come to check me out. Overall, BG, the others at the lodge and the lodge’s medical team were all extremely helpful. BG got their medical team on the case and I had a few phone calls with them over the next couple of days. The medical manager came to check on me in person and also checked in with me each day. It was a great team response to my accident.

After the bleeding was under control and the paramedic checked me out, I didn’t feel bad at all. Surprisingly, my face didn’t hurt. My nose was throbbing a bit, but it only hurt a lot when I touched my nose. Otherwise, I felt fine.

So… I decided I was good to go on the afternoon game drive! 😊 To say everyone was surprised would be an understatement. But, heck, we just spent over 2 days to get here, I didn’t want to miss anything if I could help it. So, we went on the afternoon game drive.

Little did I know, my face was busy swelling up more while we were out on the drive. Here I am at the end of that afternoon.

Not great, but not horrible. Well, I just had to wait until the next day to see what my face would look like. And THAT was horrible. 😱 I couldn’t believe this is what I looked like the next day!

Yikes! It didn’t hurt as much as it looked like it should. As long as I didn’t touch my nose, I was fine. There was no pain without touching it. Unfortunately, this means that I looked like this for our entire trip. Bummer!

After a few days, the swelling around my eyes started to go down – and I got a lot more colorful! What’s really crazy is that the left side of my face swelled up a lot. You can see how my left cheek is so swollen. I even ended up with purple bruises at my chin bone. I took this selfie the day we were leaving Euphorbia to go to Mala Mala. So, the next folks saw me like this.

After a few more days, we were heading from Mala Mala over to Tswalu. Here is a selfie I took on one of the flights that day.

And, finally, a few more days later, and this is what I looked like. The swelling has gone down and my left cheek is mottled yellow/green.

Now, I’m back at home, but I still have bruising on my face. This selfie below was taken on September 4th and my fall was on August 19th. I’m not sure how long it will take to get rid of the bruising, probably a few more weeks.

I still have swelling on the left side of my nose and a bit on my left cheek, but most of the other swelling has gone. As you can see, I’m still yellow on the left side of my face.

Bummer this happened, but at least I was able to keep on going with the trip. I didn’t miss a thing due to this. Too bad everyone we met will never know what I really look like. 😊

OK, now that you have all these crazy photos of me, I can get back to sharing the rest of our trip. The next blog post will show you our first game drive.