Because things can and will go wrong

I woke up at 2am with a stabbing pain in my lip.

Feeling it with my tongue, it was swollen. I then used my fingers. Holy smokes, something is wrong.

Stuck in the top bunk, I slowly descended, trying my best not to wake the others in my four-person dorm.

Picture it: me in pajamas, hobbling to the bathroom mirrors, praying this was all just some weird overheated dream. Nope, it was certainly not a dream.

Staring back at me in the mirror was a total Kylie Jenner lip challenge -- a literal balloon in place of my typically smaller-than-average top lip.

Holy shit. Why does this always happen to me? I wondered.

I whipped out my phone in an attempt to Google a solution. My phone, on the other hand, had other plans and refused to hook up to the WiFi. Of course, I sighed.

For the next five minutes, I was like a headless chicken. Well, a headless chicken with a lot of tears and questions. Do I wake up my friend? Am I dying? What do I do?

After what felt like eons, my phone connected to the wifi. HALLELUJAH.

To Google I went:

lip huge fiji
lip blown up
lip overnight big
lip swollen fiji
what to do in an emergency fiji

None of these options were helping.

I called my partner who was ten hours away, sleepy, and understandably not much help.

My next option: I called my parents.

"Again? Why do things always happen to you?" my mom said, a bit unfazed.

"I don't know, I woke up and it was like this!" I cried, reverting back to a five-year-old needing her mom.

"Go wake your friend up, and get ice," she commanded.

"But I don't want to bother her," I replied sheepishly embarrassed.

"Seriously?"

I hung up and went to bug my friend.

--- 

"Kim, Kim, Kim," I shook her leg.

"Huh? Yeah, I'm up."

"LOOK."

Just one glance of the sausage lip had her wide awake and helpful, searching up emergency services and cooking up a plan: I was to walk to the front, looking for ice and assistance, and if there was nobody there, we'd form a Plan B.

With the only illumination being the moon and my flashlight, I wandered into the darkness. Please, please, let someone be awake.

"Hello?" I heard a voice booming from the darkness.

"Uh, hi?" I called out, unsure where the voice was coming from.

All of a sudden, a phone light came on, clearly illuminating a face. There was a security guard chilling in the darkness, who kindly told me that I would have to wait four hours for the resort staff to wake up to get ice. I guess my Plan B is sorted, I thought.

Coming back to the room, Kim was armed with her phone full of advice.

"Okay, the hospital is an hour away. We can go there."

"That's okay, I can survive four hours, right?" I replied, defeated and climbing back into my bunk. 

— 

In the morning, my lip was a little less swollen.

"It's fine, it just looks like bad lip filler."

"It fkn hurts."

— 

At breakfast, I was able to get ice and chat with a few of the resort staff.

"It's probably a flying wasp, we'll fumigate, don't worry," they said, handing me some ice and letting the moment pass. 

Because nobody else was particularly fazed, I didn't let it faze me. Plus, my lip was slowly deflating, and that was good enough for me. 

Later in the day, the kids in the resort alerted me that I'd probably had some toothpaste left on my lip, which attracted the bugs.

Checks out, I thought.