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I hate being in pain. I’m not sure about you but when you feel great you really don’t appreciate living without pain. Our wonderful friends “Mammy” Gloria and “Pappy” Dennis who have a great little bed and breakfast in Bora Bora had one of their relatives bring us some fruit yesterday. I really couldn’t believe how much fruit they brought us though. The wheelbarrow was overflowing! Surrounding a huge strand of bananas were pamplemousse, starfruit and what they called “gold” on the island (lemons which are now $10 per kilo). I was absolutely breathless with the quantity of fruit they were brining us, especially when I found out that there were actually 3 “regimes” or stalks of bananas!

With all of this glorious fresh fruit we will definitely eat well but we will have to be careful to eat it quickly otherwise much of it will go bad before we can eat it all. Something we have learned from experience over the past few months.

“Pappy” Dennis was kind enough to drive one of his grandkids, Dailin and me to the marina where we had moored our boat so that we could easily load our food into the dingy and get it all onto our boat. We had to go back and forth to take multiple trips with all of the fruit we had.

Seeing a large stalk of bananas on the dock I bent over to pick up and place the bananas into the dingy. As I leaned over and started to lift the bananas I immediately felt a pop and sharp pain in my lower back. “Argh”, I though as I roll over and onto my back on the dock. The sun was blazing hot but I was not about to move an inch as it hurt too much. I tried to roll onto my side but the pain was too sharp.

Dailin and Mata continued to load the dingy up with the various fruits we had received while I lay there on my back. I unslung the camera bag that was wrapped around me and passed it over to Dailin so that I didn’t have anything left to carry.

Each time I tried to lift up my head I couldn’t move it far. I kept my sunglasses on as I lay on my back in the hot sun. Feeling that I just needed a little bit of time I told Dailin to go ahead and load everything onto our sailboat and come back for me later. He didn’t know what else to do and so he zipped off to the boat that was only 200 feet away in the marina.

I lay there holding my back for another minute or two before I saw “Pappy” Dennis coming down the dock. He had stayed on the edge of the water and had not come down the floating dock due to a 4 foot wide gap between the shore and the floating dock that was rather hard to get across. Until Dailin left me laying there on my back I don’t think he realized that I had been injured. As he approached me, he could tell something had happened due to the look of pain on my face. He offered to help me up and after adjusting myself with a lot of pain I managed to put my hands out. That’s when the most painful moment came. He lifted me up and although I tried to let him do all of the lifting, the injured muscles in my back tensed up as it worked to keep my body upright. Pain shot through my back as I came upright.

As soon as I was on my feet however I discovered that the pain was not so bad if I made sure to keep my shoulders directly upright and I could even move if I hobbled along like an ninety year old man.

Dennis had me follow him down the dock with the 4 foot wide gap being the most difficult. He then drove me the half a kilometre to his home where he explained my situation to his wife and daughter Nounette. For the next few hours Gloria and Nounette helped me out. First they checked to see if there was someone like a chiropractor on the island. They discovered that Bora Bora did not have a chiropractor but that there was a local Osteopath which focuses less on bone manipulation and more on the full body and muscles. When trying to make me an appointment there, they were told that I needed to first get a referral from a doctor. Gloria waited in line at the clinic while Nounette came back to the house to get me.

I have to admit I was desperate and so I let the doctor give me a shot in my back… only to find out later that it was a shot of ibuprofen… the same thing I had taken two tablets of only an hour earlier. I was hoping for something a little stronger than that to dull the pain and let me stretch out the injured muscle. Following the doctors visit we drove around looking for the Osteopath only to find out that he was working at one of the local resort hotels. My desperation for immediate relief would have to wait until 11 am the following day.