Hell of a journey: Take a break ... and get one

By PHOEBE FALCONER

This is how the holiday ends, I think. Not so much with a bang or a whimper, but rather with a slip and a scream.

This is day one of a holiday in Fiji, which husband Bill won at his yacht club. Just another little dip in the pool before lunch was what was intended.

The swim was fine, but as I came back over the side of the pool, one foot hit the aggregate concrete and the other landed on a dinky little strip of inset tiles.

The tile-based foot slipped sideways until it hit the concrete, then stopped. The body above it did not. Down I went, with a crash and a crack. And a scream.

My first thought was a sprained ankle. Trying to straighten my leg brought further screams and encouraged Bill to search for a doctor. This newish resort does not have a doctor. So the local nurse was dragged from her usual job as dive trip organiser and arrived to inspect the damage.

"No broken bones" was her analysis, but a visit to Nadi for an x-ray and doctor's diagnosis seemed to be in order.

The nurse promised to make the appointments and a hotel reservation, as the ferry timetable made it impossible for us to return to the resort that night.

Her next suggestion was the best - that I be made to lie on a bed with my leg up, ice on the ankle and be fed whisky until it was time to catch the ferry to Nadi. All of which I did.

A golf cart came to transport us to the ferry at 3 o'clock. The whisky and painkillers had made some inroads on the pain, but hobbling down the jetty to the ferry was uncomfortable, to say the least.

Bill was trying to carry me on board when a large Fijian deckhand swept him aside and effortlessly carried me aboard and settled me in a seat with my foot on an old chillybin. Ah, the joys of feeling kittenish again.

At the other end of the fortunately smooth crossing was another stagger up a long jetty to the car and driver provided by the doctor.

We arrived at the x-ray clinic, to find it on the second floor of an old building which had no lift. One wonders what happens to people with broken backs.

Bill staggered up the stairs with me feeling distinctly unkittenish in his arms, and the x-ray was taken by a very kind and gentle Fijian technician.

Discretion dictated that I hop back down the stairs, and away we went to the other side of town and the doctor.

Ah, the doctor. What a charming man! Part Fijian, part European, handsome, urbane and witty. He diagnosed something, I never quite understood what, offered anti-inflammatory drugs, more painkillers and a pair of crutches, advised ice and rest and sent us on our way to the hotel.

The young man at the hotel assured us he could provide a wheelchair. There was murmured discussion at the reception desk, and the busboy returned to shamefacedly admit that the only wheelchair had a flat tyre.

But he was resourceful. He found a luggage trolley, one of those big ones with a bar across the top, and placed an armchair on it. I was manhandled into the chair, and once enthroned, and with Bill following behind, we proceeded majestically and hysterically to our room.

Room service in the hotel provided dinner and enough in the way of pain-relieving alcohol to make some sleep possible.

Next morning, back to the ferry and my favourite deckhand, and a return to the resort.

Activities for the rest of the week were curtailed to a large degree. Crutches and soft sand are not a good mix, so after two days I dispensed with the crutches, and managed to get around using a stiff-legged gait that looked strange but was more or less effective.

I could reach the bar, given time, and two restaurants. Lying around reading is what any good holiday is about anyway, and I didn't feel bad about missing the Hoby-cat sailing or the scuba-diving.

So the week passed.

On our return to Auckland, I visited my GP, who again diagnosed a sprain and suggested physiotherapy.

The physiotherapist thought further x-rays might be in order, and discovered a break in my fibula, the smaller bone that runs from knee to ankle.

Fortunately the bones had not moved during my exertions in Fiji. Now we knew (a) why it hurt so much and (b) why my ankle wasn't swollen.

Ten weeks later, four of them in a walking boot, and the break was healed.

One should take something from each experience, so what did we learn from this?

To walk extremely carefully on wet tiles, and to keep one's weight at a reasonable level.

And never to return to Fiji.