Kinvig

..in the hope of getting published (gotta start somewhere!):

It is only by visiting the medical facilities of another country that you an realise the benefits (or disadvantages) of healthcare in the UK.

I had the pleasure of first hand knowledge of another countries healh care when I decided upon a motorcycle adventure around the world. Man and machine taking on the world in some hare-brained scheme to avoid the Big Brother 27 for 6 months.

After 4000 miles the roads turned to track, then they stopped altogether and were replaced by rutted, sandy banks. I headed down this arduous terrain at the break-neck speed of 20 mph. Ah, the roads in the glorious nation of Kazakhstan! Despite my caution oncoming traffic, mainly lorries that were actually building the delapidated roads, were still travelling at 40-50mph. It was shortly after this that I discovered the need to visit a hospital rather urgently! Somehow my bike had ended up in one of the sandy banks on top of my left foot. I was unable to move - through pain and the fact that I was pinned down by 220 kg of metal on a weak point in my heavy duty left boot. Ironically, the first person to come to my aid was the bulldozer driver who was in charge of fixing the road that I was travelling on!

I tried to stand upright and the pain from my foot advised me that the best course of action was to sit down and look helpless! Eventually a car arrived and to my good fortune the driver agreed to drive me the 10 miles to a town further up the road where there was a clinic! Result! Off we went at a pace that would have impressed a Formula One driver on a track that was so badly potholed it would have impressed a yorkshire caver.

We arrived at the town, which turned out to be a village, where the injured westerner was the centre of attention. The local camel herder came over, as did all the village's children, who were curiously absent from school, and they pointed us in the direction of a single story building. Actually, all the buildings' were single story but this one was different in that it was painted blue.

We got out of the car and I hobbled to the building. A girl opened the door and upon seeing me hobbling motioned for me to take my boot off. Great, I thought. A nurse and she's concerned about the state of my foot. Erm, no. As per Kazak custom everyone must remove all outside footwear before entering a house. I knew that once I'd gotten the boot off, I'd have trouble putting it back on afterwards, but as I was at a clinic I figured I had nothing to lose! How wrong I was! It was only after taking my boot off that the girl informed me that there was no doctor in the village. Looking back, I realise that the clinic may have been the clinic for the local midwife. My foot was bathed and bandaged up. The girl who I took to be a nurse was nowhere to be seen. It's a curious fact of rural Kazak life that women are subservient to men and as there were men there, the men would deal with me. Men's work, evidently. It was up to the man that had driven me to the village, my Michael Schumacher-wannabe, to bandage me up! I was in much pain but no pain killers were offered.

After much discussion between the locals and Michael Schumacher it was decided that I would go to the nearest town 40 miles away. All I needed to do was to get my boot back on! After a display of pure contorsionist magic I managed to get my boot back on and we were on our way to the nearest town at Warp Speed, Mr Sulu.

We arrived at the town in the early afternoon and located the hospital straightaway! The hospital even had a doctor. I hobbled into his consultation room, where all the nurses and orderlies were hanging around to get a view of the westerner and his foot! After much prodding of my foot and a lot of pointing at my phrase book he nodded sagely then left the room. I assumed that this was to get some pain killers but no. Upon looking out of the window at the crumbling building I spied my doctor having a cigarette. Surely the prognosis couln't be that bad!!!! After coming back he did a mime that a contestant on Give Us a Clue would have been proud of. The upshot of which was that he wasn't sure what was wrong and that the x-ray machine was broken.

Whilst this was going on, Michael Schumacher informed me, in mime, that my bike was at the house of a truck driver who'd collected it and would offer me accomodation for the night.

The attraction of the westerner was such a draw that the chief consultant came in specially to look at me. Wow! He looked at my foot and must have been impressed. He decided that the only course of action would be a party in honour of my foot at the truck drivers house, where there would be much russian vodka to cure my foot's pain. And apparently make me a good dancer. All I wanted was an x-ray. Instead, I was guest of honour, knocking back the vodka to numb the pain, being encouraged by the head consultant to have big measures!! Everyone time I tried to ask for a small shot (choot choot) my request was declined by the senior consultant who poured me a bigger measure than Oliver Reed could manage. Whoa, imagine that on the NHS!!!!

It was with a "slight" headache that the truck driver took me the 100 miles to the nearest city that had a working x-ray machine! I hobbled into the hospital with a crutch that had been cobbled together for me specially by some local builders after they had finished laughing at the sight of the westerner from the Ministry of silly walks.

The hospital staff were great. Upon discovering that I didn't speak Kazak or Russian they shouted louder and louder before eventually pointing me in the direction of the X-Ray machine, where my swollen foot was x-rayed and it was discovered that I'd fractured a bone in my foot.

So, 28 hours after my accident I was finally diagnosed and my foot was subsequently put in a cast. Crutches were not offered and a week on I have not been able to find a pharmacy that sells them! This area of Kazakhstan is mainly steppe, which means that nothing grows on it. So, with no trees there is no wood to make crutches. I've been hopping around dosed up on Ketamine (available at any pharmacy without a presciption). The annoying thing for me is that with a foot in a cast it makes it kind of hard to change gear on my broken bike. I'll have to postpone the trip until such time as I'm well enough ride on and maybe, just maybe, experience the delights of the mongolian Health Service. Stay tuned!