The Doctor and the Glass

10/30/2013

The Doctor and a Lega Navale fellow who’s around a lot were sitting in front of me.

The Doctor smile, “Hi Dov, how are you?”

“Buona, come stai?” [Good, how are you?]

The Doctor had promised me the day before, for the n-th time, that tomorrow he would take the glass out of my foot.  Like every time before that, I believed him.  But this time, there was extra hope, because the day before he saw the x ray results.

“So can we get the glass out of my foot?”  I asked him.

“It is not so simple.”  He told me.  “You can not do this here, we must do this at the hospital.”

“Okay, when can we go?”

He talked to the Lega Navale regular for a while in Italian about my foot.  I didn’t catch very much since my Italian is most limited to “Come stai?” and if the answer is anything other than “Buono” I have a problem.

“If you have the surgery, you will not be able to go kayaking afterwards for a long time.  I think ten days.  There is lots of bacteria in the sea.”

Over the last week there’s been very little pain in my foot.  Sometimes I feel a dull ache when I stand on it.

“If I don’t get surgery I’ll probably cut it out on my own and go kayaking the same day.”

“You should not do this.  Leave it in, and if you have a problem, go to a hospital.”

“If I have a problem in Turkey, I may not have access to a hospital.”  I told him.  I wanted the glass out.

“I think you should leave it in.”

Damn.  I guess I’ll have to wait until I get to Israel.  The doctor says I’ll probably be fine.  The Lega Navale regular says plenty of people live with shrapnel in them.