Monday's painful kidney disease nerve damage episode took my legs out from under me and left me in my hotel room on vacation in Mexico all alone with a PTSD panic attack.  But on Thursday I got out and about and went on a half day church tour.  The tour guide got a chair for me to sit in at every step of the way, so I decided to take the plunge and do an all day boat ride tour today.

It started out looking like a mistake.  When our tour bus got down by the river and 40 of us went to get on the boat, the boat captain pulled me aside and said that with my cane I couldn't sit with everybody else.  I had to come upstairs to the wheelhouse and sit next to him.  I felt picked on.

Once we were out on the river, though, along with steering the boat he started doing his tour guide description speeches at each point of interest along the river.  Since I grew up as a missionary kid in Mexico and South America (where I got my PTSD, by the way)  I speak both English and Spanish, so the boat captain asked me to translate his Spanish speeches to English point of interest by point of interest.

After a while, it was like we were a comedy team or something, Laurel & Hardy or Abbot & Costello.  We got so into it that we decided to pull a prank on our 40 passengers.  Don't worry, it was all in fun, they didn't fall for it, you had to be there, trust me, it was funny, not triggering anxiety to them.  What we did was cut the boat's engine in mid river and tell them we'd run out of gas and they'd have to row us the rest of the way.  All 40 boat passengers cracked up with laughter

It turns out that half of our 40 passengers were from Europe and China and wouldn't have understood our boat captain's Spanish speeches describing our river tour's points of interest.  They only understood English.  So as they got off the boat at the trip's end, they shook the captain hand thanking him for the ride and then MY hand thanking me for the translation as if I worked for the captain instead of being a passenger.  

It was hilarious and sweet.  After feeling like a useless invalid Monday and Tuesda, today I so useful today that felt like I almost got me a job down here in old Mexico!

Oh, it was so good to laugh and end the week with a good time outdoors after being cooped up with PTSD and Chronic Kidney Disease nerve pain at the week's start.  Thanks for helping get me through those two days alone in my hotel room at the week's beginning.