Take Your Vitamins......

Oh Bequia!

A guy down the road had a heart attack recently.  He didn't make it.  That's the thing here.  It's all fine and dandy when you're chowing down on mangos and getting sand out of the crotch of your bather bottoms.  But when shit hits the big one - it's a long way to The States.  Even to Barbados - where they have a much greater capacity to stop you from kicking the bucket early, it's a mission - the plane schedule isn't exactly encouraging.  Basically you're rooted.  So in other words.  Try not to die.

Oh Kirsty!

That news would have freaked me out when we first started travelling with our three month old bundles of cuteness.  I was right onto it with hospital addresses and Western style doctors every place we went.  But you get slack.  With anything.  Take this blog for example - I'm slacker than the waist-band of Kirsty Alley's old tracksuit pants after Jenny Craig threatened to take off the payroll if she didn't stop burying her face in burgers.  And I know she wears tracksuit pants, because I saw her once in Paris.  It was at the Ritz while we were scoping what the mega rich get up to.  You have to just have a tiny look at the Ritz when you're in Paris, the building is beautiful  - or perhaps you could buy a cup of tea for 50 euros in the dining room and fake your ability for ostentatious spending.

I'll take the presidential suite thanks

A $500 glass of champagne for me please

Just a comb Kirsty, just a comb

Anyway, I saw Kirsty and her daughter standing in the doorway as we sat down.  Time had not been kind.  She was wearing filthy black stretched out tracksuit pants that looked like a homeless person had dug them out of a Kmart reject bin 50 years ago.  The stains were obviously food related - I didn't doubt that she'd cut sick on the room service, ate it in bed and then dragged herself down to the dining room for extra croissants.  The hair was pretty feral.  In fact ferals themselves have better hair than Kirsty did that day.  Look, it's her life she can obviously do what she wants (and does).  But seriously - you're at the Ritz in PARIS.  For god's sake cover that mess with a beret...or something.  Unfortunately I had my back to her over lunch but I kept asking for updates on what she was doing from Chalks - so I wouldn't appear too much like a stare bear.  He got so sick of my questions that he told me that she was eating her soup by faceplanting it.  I actually twisted my neck trying to get a look.

But back to my now nonchalance about medical services.  Sometimes I did find it inconvenient before the kids came along not to be able to just pop off to the old family doctor for all my woes.  It was always a mission to sort out medical help - language, location, actually getting there.  Not to mention the expense.  I once got charged nearly $400 to see a doctor for 10 minutes in a hospital in NYC.  The accounts lady actually apologised for the US medical system and advised me that if I asked to get billed rather than paying on the spot, they would never chase it up.  Thanks love.  Therefore, I rarely sought the advice of the anatomically gifted.  Could have needed it on occasion though.  It's like beauty treatments.  Sometimes you just say fuck it and wax your own stray pubes.  I would NEVER recommend this by the way.  Once I tried to brighten my teeth with a homemade mouthwash made from hydrogen peroxide.  Yep, I wouldn't go there either.  Unless you enjoy having about 30 ulcers on the under side of your tongue.  I think I swirled just that minute too long.  Actually a visit to the doctor would have been a good idea there, but I was in Iceland on a road trip, and it just wasn't happening for me.  It was an excruciating experience.  Really truly bad.  In fact possibly worse than childbirth, because it lasts for days and you can't eat or speak.  Has anyone ever tried to talk by not moving their tongue.  Test it out.  That is, if mild retardation is your thing.  I grew tired of the jokes, and as Chalks from that day onwards always refers to our passports as "Carscorts", that memory of agony refuses to fade.   I constantly took Panadol Fortes for 4 days to deal with it, and ate only yogurt by tipping it down the back of my throat with a small spoon.

I'm fully aware this is disgusting - note the left side

Bequia - and more to the point the stunning property we get to live in, we thought, is worth the risk of not having access to everything you may imagine you need.  We decided when we first came here that never for one second were we going to have a situation where one of us wasn't watching the pool.  Basically it's an unfenced death trap for toddlers.  Chalks did a CPR course - and I actually don't think they even have a ambulance here.  But even if they do - the destination doesn't not exactly inspire confidence.  Basically we are just counting on everything going right.  But sometimes it doesn't.

Unfenced deathpit

I was out for a run one evening.  I'd driven our car to the other side of the island where I can run in peace without people staring at me and cars beeping.  Someone tried to high five me out of a moving van window one day - I find that kind of thing annoying.  I like to be alone to concentrate on my pain.  Anyway as I drove back from town I was flagged down by one of the local taxi drivers who informed me "Valli be in the hospital".  It's not exactly the news you welcome when you're dealing with your own self inflicted heart attack.  The hospital was about 100 metres away so I high-tailed it in there.  And there was my little baby sitting on Chalks knee having blood washed off her head.  She'd taken a fall off a stool and freakishly landed straight on her head and straight on her hair elastic.  Again freakishly, the hair elastic made a tiny puncture in her scalp.  Apparently it bled alot.  Head injuries always do.  She got all dizzy and insisted on lying down, I wasn't there, Chalks had no car, so he called a taxi to take him to the hospital.  After cleaning her head, the nurse said that the little puncture was an issue and needed the attention of the doctor - who was watching TV at home, about 30 metres up the road.  What was also disturbing was that Valli was saying that she couldn't see properly - that everything was blurry.

Just not inspiring confidence

It's in the basement you see there....

So off we went to the doctor.  His office was in the basement of his falling apart house.  The entry was filled with boxes of half-unpacked medical supplies, and there were old faded Christmas decorations on the walls.  He took a look at the wound and checked Valli for concussion.  This was after informing us that he "Trusts God first, and this (gestures to medical tool) second"  I began to wonder if he had actually attended medical school or it was just his night job outside the church.  Apparently it was just a reasonably mild case of concussion, but he still advised us not to go to sleep that night.  Instead we were advised to watch her all night in case she started bleeding from her nose or ears.  Comforting.  He offered to put her in the hospital for the night - but honestly after seeing the place I felt safer at home.  He said that head wounds can infected easily here, and put her on antibiotics to prevent meningitis.  Again, comforting.  We debated what to do.  Try and get our arses to The States the next day?  Well, we couldn't do anything about that night.  I didn't sleep much, and I kept waking Valli up to make sure she actually could. I had the "Doctor" on speed dial - his business card consisted of a large religious quote across the top and a phone number.

The offender

Watch out for chickens

Of course she was fine.  It's just when these things happen, you can't help but imagine the worst.  Who would have thought that a hair toggle could do that.  Seriously?  After later research we discovered that apparently heaps of kids have got brain damage and skull fractures from hair accessories.  So there you go everyone, there's a new thing to worry about.  Forget broken limbs on playground equipment  and getting all the skin scraped off after particularly bad bike accidents.  Or how's this one - my Mum once dropped a frozen chicken on my baby sisters head at Coles.  She bawled her eyes out - my Mum, not my sister.  She thought she'd damaged my sister for life....and we haven't ruled it out yet - she's one of those people that asks you a question every 5 seconds during a movie.  Anyway, also forget rock hard poultry - now you have to consider the possibility that a hair elastic could permanently fuck your kid's head up.  Flowing locks never looked so good.  But for us, it was of course a happy ending - we just had to keep her quiet for a couple of days (almost impossible), and there was no TV or electronic devices for 2 weeks on the doctor's orders......

Now that was the worst news of all.........

I love you my darling