Cat got your lip?

As I think I mentioned I got a cat recently. My host family in Corinto had a cat that recently had kittens and they offered me one. Since I have a significant mouse/rat problem in my house I thought, what the hell, I could be a cat person. Plus, I live alone and its nice to have someone to talk to other than myself. The odd thing is that I only talk to the cat in Spanish. I just don't think it would make sense to talk to in English, its a Nicaraguan cat. With the recommendations of some of the neighbor boys, I named the cat David Beckham, or Becks for short. Anyways, here are some pics of little David Beckham:




Chewing on my bike spokes which I thought was funny...

And now for the mystery of my lip....

On Jan. 2nd, the day my friends and I were leaving San Juan del Sur I woke up at around 8:00am. I didnt eat any breakfast. Around 8:34am I said to my friends that were awake, "My lip feels wierd." They shrugged it off. Within 10 minutes they were saying to me, "Holy crap Paul! What happened to your lip!" My lip apparently just decided to start swelling up, a lot. Only my upper lip. Everyone asked me, did you get bit by a spider or something? Not that I noticed. Did you eat anything out of the ordinary? Nope, just things that I've eaten my whole life (or at least for the past year). So it was a bit of a mystery why I had an upper lip roughly the size of a football. We all chalked it up to a probably spider bite while I was sleeping. I took some Benedryl, and we had lots of laughs about it until later that afternoon when the swelling went down (although it didn't go completely down until the next morning). Chalk it up to something wierd that happened on vacation.

People were calling me Marge Simpson because the Simpson's characters have a bigger upper lip than lower. I look just like her.

I purposefully made myself look like a sad puppy in this picture so that when I showed people the pic they would feel really sorry for me. But the truth is that I was pretty much laughing during this whole ordeal.

So Jan 3rd my upper lip was finally back to normal. I thought to myself "What a wierd freak thing to happen, I don't even have any allergies that I know of. Oh well, its over now." By Jan 4th I was back in Corinto and completely forgot about the lip swelling incident.

I woke up on Jan 5th, my birthday, and went to lay in my hammock. A neighbor boy came over to wish me happy birthday and we were sitting there talking. All of the sudden I had a sensation in my lower lip and I thought to myself, "This cannot be happening again!" I ran into my room and popped two Benedryl pills. I thought I might catch it before it got out of control. But no. It swelled and swelled and swelled until I looked just like Bubba from Forrest Gump. Again, I didn't eat anything strange and didn't feel anything biting me. Plus, the spider bite theory was pretty much debunked because it is very unlikely that a spider would bite me in southern Nicaragua on the upper lip, cause me an allergy for the first time, and then three days later bite me on the lower lip in northern Nicaragua. I think the early Benedryl did help me this time because the lip was unswollen by 5pm. Thank goodness because I was still able to go out for my birthday.

Anyways, I still have no idea exactly why my lip swelled up twice. I talked to some doctors here about it and they say it must be from something I ate. Maybe. But I just ate what I always eat. Anyways, I am now 16-days lip-injury free. I'm going to try and keep the streak going.