Michelle was looking after my best interest. Sunday morning, 9am, we got up to do 40 minutes of Davinia exercises on a DVD before hitting Lavinia for the 15% off sale on wine & liquor(!). We finished the warm up, Michelle bent down to pick up her weights and bam, she shrieks, she’s bent over in a not very comfortable looking position, and continues to moan, and scream, and cry. She’s stuck. Her back gave out, in the same place as last summer, only tenfold, she can’t move. I stuff cushions under her for support and call SOS Médecins on 3624….

1 hour later the doctor arrives, sticks a needle in her ass, tells her she’s off work for a week, writes a doctors note and sends me out to the pharmacy to stock up on codeine, valium and a few other concoctions of pills (the french love prescribing pills). We manage to move her to the bed around 1pm administer the portable pharmacy and I race off to meet Di & Greg at Lavinia.

The rest of the afternoon Michelle slept, drugged up on her cocktail, in a fixed position flat on the bed. We fought about the ‘going to work’ debate, apparently she absolutely positively has to be there everyday between now and when we leave for Korea, but I won with the arguement saying that until she can make it to the toilet and back, not to mention into the shower and down our 3 flights of stairs there’s not much hope of that happening… she’s been reasonably quiet here at home today, but she’s still insisting on going to work tomorrow… we’ll see, by then I might be tired of making tea, administering pills and catering to her every whim.

In fact, I think I might help her down the stairs….