Can't stand up for falling down

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sun 9 Jan 2011 23:05

Sat 8th & Sunday 9th Jan

 

The only real matter of importance over these two days has been Sarah’s continuing illness.

 

Saturday saw no improvement at all and given that she had now gone two and half days with no food, just liquids and still she had diarrhoea and stomach pains we agreed that she needed specialist help, however it was already late on Saturday afternoon which is not a great time to do such things in a strange country.

 

Help was on hand in the form of Martin Smyth who lives here and he immediately responded to my phone call by finding an emergency clinic that would be open till late and all day Sunday. The first catch was how to get Sarah ashore, given that she could barely stand and was not sure she could last long without a handy loo! Scott-Free have a decent rib and kindly offered to act as a ferry, but they were still in town at this point and darkness was fast approaching (6.00pm) so we decided that the safest and most practical solution was to schedule the exercise for the following morning.

 

In the event, everything went smoothly. Steve from S-F arrived before 8.00am with his rib and ferried Sarah (who was feeling a bit stronger after a bit better night’s sleep) and myself into the Careenage, which is the entrance to the Constitution River that runs through Bridgetown. This snakes a little way into the town and ends at a convenient dinghy park where we were met Martin who had kindly driven in to take us to the clinic himself.

 

The clinic was pretty empty, well it was only 8.15am on a Sunday and Sarah was quickly seen and soon put onto a saline drip and blood tests done as well as being weighed which revealed that she had shed one and a half stone! She was then put onto a 3 hour long drip containing various ingredients (no I don’t know what they were!) and we sat there until 12.30. This was not as boring for me as you might suppose because this is Barbados and the TV in the waiting room was showing the whole of the live coverage of a 20/20 cricket international between South Africa and India. I was not the only one engrossed in this!

 

Eventually Sarah was released and we picked up the prescription she had been given and got a taxi back to the waterfront where very kindly Steve and Chris were waiting to ferry us back to Serafina.

 

However, we have to return tomorrow morning to a nearby facility so that they can do Ultra sound scan of Sarah’s appendix as they are a little concerned that this might be related to a grumbling appendix. Hey Ho, good job this all took off after we had completed the crossing!!

 

Ended Sunday by doing a few loads of washing and inflating and launching our own dinghy so I can take Sarah ashore in the morning.

 

The anchorage is pretty rolly as I mentioned before and the very loud disco/club does run until 4.00am. In addition there appears to be totally unregulated Jet Ski hire from the beach and so we do have to put up with these noisy machines blasting around us during the day.....so not a lot to commend the place yet. However our brief run ashore today was very enlightening and we are both very much looking forward to seeing more of the island and its VERY smiley and welcoming inhabitants.