Step Backward

A TURN FOR THE WORSE:  It was one week ago today that CJ's shin took on a boulder and lost. 

Since his accident, we have been watching the injury closely and we have been keeping it clean/sterile and protected, and CJ has been really pretty good about taking it easy, but by Dec. 30th we thought it looked like it was getting worse, not better, and so Christian took him in to urgent care. 

They instructed Christian to keep an eye on it, and watch for it to get red margins and tough to the touch. Last night when I was redressing the wound, lo and behold, red margins had developed and it was hard. MAJOR BUMMER. So  today, it was my turn to take him to Group Health where the Dr. confirmed our suspicion that it's now infected. Unfortunately the urgent care visit today turned into a FIVE HOUR odyssey, but I will spare you the details. We now have antibiotics, and hopefully CJ's healing will get a boost in the right direction from here forward, fingers crossed!

To rewind a bit, after getting Rick and Annabelle started on their work for the day in West Seattle, CJ and I headed to Capitol Hill. We'd never approached Group Health from that direction, so at least we had a scenic drive. There was one portion that was stunning, as we were heading into the city over a high green bridge, with a view to the west of the stadiums, and in front of us, skyscrapers, including pointy Smith Tower, that was Seattle's tallest building a long, long time ago. 

Doing a little research tonight, we learned it was the Dr. Jose Rizal Bridge (12th Avenue South) we crossed for the first time.

Gorgeous, isn't it? (Two following photos from Seattle Department of Transportation)

Just over 100 years old, the 420-foot span is one of Seattle's original steel bridges. It's on the National Register of Historic Places and is the state's oldest steel arch bridge. It crosses over Dearborn.  

The view was a little different back in 1912, in this great photo from the Seattle Municipal Archives

I'd love to walk across this bridge some day and take some photos. Check out this lovely graphic of it on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/48054713@N08/5574176135/

Of course, we also had to read up on the bridge's namesake. From Wikipedia we learned "José Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda, was a Filipino nationalist, novelist, poet, ophthalmologist, journalist, and revolutionary. He is widely considered the greatest national hero of the Philippines."
                                                       
An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal was also a writer and poet. He died a martyr, executed by a firing squad on Dec. 30, 1896, by a squad of Filipino soldiers of the Spanish Army. Wikimedia Commons had a photo engraving of the event.

There are memorials to Rizal all over the world, and there is a self-sustaining, non-profit, and non-partisan, Website containing comprehensive materials on and by Rizal in both the English and Filipino languages: http://www.joserizal.ph/in01.html