A Fiasco in Papeete - October 16, 2007

So we had along, unplanned stay on the island of Makemo. We met an extremely nice family there, and I also had some medical issues, but I'll explain that later. Right now we are in Tahanea, but we have had rainy and stormy weather for a good five days; an occluded front is passing through. My mom's 51st birthday was the on the 13th, my grandmother's 84 was on the 4th, today is my grandparent's 59 anniversary, and tomorrow is by brother's 22nd birthday. October is a full month. Makemo is a beautiful island but we had to keep going.

During our stay my brother and I decided to get SCUBA certified in Makemo. The instructor spoke broken English so most of it was watch and learn experience rather that aural explanations. Anyways, our first day of diving was fine, only in about 15 feet of water. I got a headache underwater and when the class was over and we had surfaced it really began to pound. I usually do not get headaches, but it subsided after about 45 minutes. The next day as soon as I went into the water my head started to pound again. It was started again later on by simply putting my head underwater. Then I went to snorkel and dove down, but when I surfaced I was in so much pain that I wasn't sure if I could swim back to the boat. Nobody was in the cockpit and the engine was on, but I managed to swim to the kayak tied to the stern. That was the worst pain I have ever been in, much more painful that breaking a bone, and I have had plenty of that. That night, I finally slept after 5 melatonin and 10 vikodin in 8 hours. The next day we went into the tiny clinic on the island and later took the flight to Papeete, Tahiti. There I went to the emergency room. After a long wait I was finally seen, but the state of the hospital facility was not encouraging. I had a CT scan, which came back negative. The doctor was not satisfied so she performed a Lumbar puncture; she drew spinal fluid from between two lower back vertebrae. The fluid was clear, no sign of blood which ruled out hemorrhaging or meningitis. After that procedure I had to lie horizontal for twelve hours so I spent the night in the hospital. I had a MRI the next day that was a weird experience. It is this huge machine that basically makes all kinds of loud noises at you. That was also negative, so the neurologists were left with the diagnosis of a migraine. It was the first of my life and hopefully the last. It was reassuring however run down the building was, the hospital in Papeete was first rate care, because it is the only place in the middle of the Pacific for medical emergencies. The strangest part of my migrain was that it would get incredibly intense and then lessen but not go away. Even after leaving the hospital, I got the sharp pain a few more times. I saw a homeopath/acupuncturist in Papeete before we flew back, and he told me that I needed to drink more. At that point I had taken a beta-blocker because my mom wanted to see if my headache had anything to do with the fact that I had recently taken some for my fast heart. Since I didn't need it, my heart rate was down to 38 or 40 so it only made my headache worse, but the beta-blockers wore off.

When we got back to Makemo we found out that Lee Wood, my mom's friend and my former pre-school teacher had decided that life on a boat was not suited for her. Titou also went home so no it is only seven of us and my grandparents leave in early November.

We moved anchorage to the old village on the other end of the island and spent a few days there. We decided to do a drift dive in the pass one day because we had been told that it was spectacular. My parents, my grandfather and I went to go snorkel and we completed two drifts. Then my dad wanted to go check out the other side of the pass in the dinghy, so my grandfather went with him and my mom and I stayed to snorkel. We had seen some sharks in the pass but they were all they way on the bottom in forty-feet of water. We swam into the shallower areas into less that ten feet. We saw some black tip reef sharks, but we have become used to those. Then something caught my eye, I called to my mom to alert her; there was a 12 foot lemon shark swimming in about 4 feet of water. Lemons are known to be aggressive and our whole philosophy had been that we would be safe in shallow water. That shark turned over everything. There we were stuck without a dinghy, but the shark moved on and my dad ended up coming back soon thereafter.

After the storm set in, we decided to leave our relatively unprotected anchorage for Tahanea. It was a short six-hour sail because we were doing a consistent eight or nine knots. Now we have been stuck with rain for a while but we plan on continuing to Fakarava shortly.

Now we have a new way of updating the blog so I should be more reliable and consistent.

Best wishes,

Giovanni