Day 255, Year 1: Broken Leg, but All Is Well
Date: Thursday, June 29, 2006
Weather: Stormy Weather
Location: Cook’s Bay, Moorea

My injured leg is in fact broken. What a bummer! But life will go on and I will adjust.

We made a decision this morning to keep the rental car for one more day so we could drive around to Afareaitu. The local hospital is there, but we also knew that today is a holiday here and weren’t sure what services would be available. Due to the language barrier, we don’t know if they could not x-ray because the machine was broken or because there were no x-ray technicians on duty for the holiday. At any rate, we were forced to go to Papeete for diagnosis and treatment, which is probably for the best as they have a very modern hospital.

We first went to the ferry terminal, but the holiday schedule did not give us much time in Papeete unless we stayed overnight. So the next stop was the airport. For about $120 both Mark and I were able to fly round-trip to Papeete. The Moorea Airline flies from Moorea to Papeete and back every hour. We arrived Papeete, caught a cab, and got to the hospital by 10:00 AM. The taxi driver was so wonderful. We had only bills for 10,000 francs ($100) and she had no change. She simply gave us her card and said to call her to come back and pick us up. We were impressed. We were also impressed by the ER administration desk. They registered me and never asked for any proof of insurance of money. When Henda told me my leg was broken, I was devastated. But then she told me I needed to go back for another x-ray because she thought another part of the fibula, just below my knee, might also be broken. Evidently it is a common occurrence. If this were the case, she explained that I would have to have a hip-high cast. I was SO happy when I found out this was not broken.

By 2:00 PM I had been x-rayed twice, had a cast on my broken fibula, and we were running around Papeete by cab looking for an open pharmacy to get medication and crutches. It cost only $114 for both x-ray sessions and another $60 for the physician consultation. The physician I was assigned was Henda Gorsane. She is a young resident from France and she was top-notch. It was a very busy day in ER and she was obviously tired, but she gave me wonderful care and did her best to explain as much as possible to me in English. She did her best to accommodate our sailing schedule with her requirements for future visits to island ER facilities, and she did all of this for $60. Absolutely everything in Papeete was closed-except for two pharmacies. Of course, it was 2 PM and they were both closed for lunch until 3 PM . Once prescriptions were filled we caught the 4:00 flight back to Moorea where Lee and Mary Ellen picked us up. Though we had spent money on an extra day of car rental, a flight to Papeete, and cab fares all over town, the total bill was still less than $500, and the hospital accounted for only $180. Plus people tried in every way possible to accommodate our lack of local language. We were very impressed.

We had planned to leave tonight for Raitea but decided to put this off until tomorrow. In fact, now we are thinking of going to Huahine first. We shall see.