And, after that brief respite, back now to hard news. The Prime Minister leaves the country tomorrow. Yes he's leaving in the middle of a very cute juncture in his tenure as Prime Minister. He's going to attend a fundraiser for his wife's charity with the Belizean community in Los Angeles. But he's also going to treat his bad back. The PM has chronic and acute back pain - and he told us today - at this point he'll try anything to get relief:�

Channel 7

PM Barrow to seek medical attention in the U.S.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow hopes for an answer from Elvin Penner by tomorrow. It's not exactly an ultimatum, but the PM leaves the country en route to LA on Wednesday. The purpose of the trip is partly official, as Barrow will be meeting with Belizean-Americans, but the PM will also be consulting on his health - his back, to be more specific. For weeks now he has been experiencing chronic and acute pain. He hopes that doctors in LA may be able to help.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

"Indeed there are three herniated discs. When I do a tour such as I did on the weekend, I take a lick. But you are right, I don't want people to think I am trotting this out to try and gain sympathy and it is always open to me to leave office and not have that sort of a worry. If I stay as I'm doing, then I don't have a right to complain too much do I and that's how I try to handle it. But it's been flaring up rather more than usual lately so I am hoping that I can get some relief from the doctors. They are now telling me about some device that you can implant under the skin that emits some sort of signals with lead wires to the spine and those signals block your brain from recording pain. All sounds to me very fantastical, but at this point, I'm willing to try anything. So I'll see how it goes when I get over there."

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