I slept only fitfully in one-hour blocks and still didn’t know what was going on, and the dose of amoxicillin didn’t seem to have done anything so I knew that I would have to see a doctor – again; after being healthy for years and only needing the occasional checkup and emergency room visit (broken bones and kidney stones) I suddenly had to see a doctor twice in two months… not a good sign at all. I’d already been to the hospital on St. Barths before, when I’d broken a toe and set it myself and wanted them to make sure I’d done it correctly. It is nice but small and I was worried that they would diagnose something bad and then fly me to the larger hospital in St. Martin and I didn’t know what I’d do with the boat, but if I sailed to St. Martin then it could be cared for by friends on the island. In the end I wasn’t sure if I would make it and walked up the hill to the Hôpital de Bruyn. They were as efficient as last time, with the same hesitation about a non-French person as last time and within 10 minutes I was being examined by a doctor. The results were inconclusive so I needed an X-Ray and Echograph (which I believe is a sonogram in English), and luckily for me the radiologist, who is based in St. Martin, was in that day. The x-ray was fast but the doctor was no respecter of pain while using the probe in looking for the problem and I was just short of crying out several times – ouch! The old haematoma from the dinghy incident was also checked out in detail and it was still 17mm long and they didn’t know if there was a causality between it and the new pain.
There were several discussions between the two doctors in French and they were not sure if I had an inflammation of the appendix or if there were more (they mentioned two other conditions which I can’t recall but both didn’t sound nice). So I traipsed off to get a blood test, although in reality I walked bent over because standing up straight hurt and I would have been passed by octogenarians using walkers had any been around to race me. The blood test results would come back in under an hour so I went back to the hospital to wait there. That wait took longer because the doctor was busy with some Americans who didn’t want to pay for their blood test ($50) because they didn’t think it was necessary. The blood tests showed raised white cell counts indicating infection and they felt it best that I get a CAT scan on St. Martin. The clinic in Marigot where the radiologist works has one so I might be going there tomorrow – part of it depends upon how I felt after the antibiotics and antispasmodics (no idea what that term translates to in English) that they prescribed for me worked. The doctor said that if all the pain was gone tomorrow I could think about not doing it, but the sonogram didn’t show the cause in detail so we didn’t know what was the problem.
I cleared out of St. Barths at the Capitainerie and purchased my antibiotics at the pharmacy before returning to the boat. The anchorage was rolly and I had trouble getting aboard, so within minutes of doing so I’d weighed anchor to return to calmer waters at Anse Colombier.
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