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Wednesday 2004-06-16 - Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Keeping it on ice
We walk back to the hotel, as much as possible along the main road because the better pavement is easier on my foot. In the hotel I find there’s a thick blue swelling on it now, and I hold the foot under the cold tap for a while, while Carla goes in search of help which appears in the form of Beatrice, an American staying and helping in the hotel who turns out to be a fully-qualified physician, working for the WHO. Her conclusion: is it’s not broken (it doesn’t “feel” broken to me), but probably a dislocated foot bone which simply snapped back into place. “It will stay stiff for seven weeks” is her verdict. Great. She also arranges to put ice on my foot: she “steals” some small water bottles from the freezer in the kitchen. I lie down with my foot up, an ice bottle held in place with a towel wrapped around it.
Around lunch time, she knocks on the door again, asking if “the patients” would like some soup and salad; a little later she appears with a tray with two bowls of soup and two carrot salads! The soup feels good in my still a bit wobbly insides — and the ice feels very good on my foot — but I’m worried it will get very stiff if I don’t exercise it. A short walk to the Synagogue nearby (we’re right in the middle of the old Jewish quarter of Bukhara) feels doable; I put on my good walking shoes now to support my foot, and take my monopod which doubles as a walking stick. On the way out I check with Beatrice: “You won’t hurt it,” she says, “and if it hurts, just come back.”
