I guess no extended foreign travel to exotic lands would be complete without some form of medical situation to spice things up and allow for meaningful interaction with the natives. Whether it is Vishnu, Montezuma or King Tut's revenge, when one feels the all too familiar tummy rumblings, the stage opens to a wild roller coaster ride.
Khaled, the owner of the El Fayrouz with his German-born wife Susan, kindly offers to drive us to the doctor's office at six o'clock. The road to Habu is much more quiet than it was earlier in the day. The near-riot at the one gas station has mostly dissipated by now and we ride unencumbered in Khaled's dusty old Mercedes sedan. Arriving at Habu, he takes the dirt road around the back of the village, skirting the perimeter of the great temple, to avoid the area where the mourning families are still gathering. I'll learn later in the evening that traditionally, funerals used to last a full week -- and still do in some of the more remote rural areas -- but now are mostly reduced to a three-day period, allowing for a long procession of friends and relatives to come pay their respects to the grieving family and bring offerings of food. It does remind me of the millennia-old carved and painted scenes I have seen in the tombs...
We enter the waiting room. Three men and two women are already sitting on low benches, waiting for their turn. Khaled sits and waits with us. A television tuned to what must be Egypt's version of C-Span shows corpulent men in their pinstripe suits and Rolex watches caught in the act of law-making. I wouldn't trust any of them, and the other sitters in the room seem equally unimpressed. True democracy is still a far-fetched dream here. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton briefly appears on the screen, with Arabic subtitles. Someone needs to tell her to fire her hair dresser immediately.
Through the door opening in the thick plastered mudbrick wall, I see slender men in their elegant galabeyas balancing huge platters of food on their heads, walking slowly towards the wake. It seems like an image from a surrealist movie. Indeed, this whole day unfolds like a movie.
It's our turn and I go in with Denny. Dr. Boutros is a handsome man of Coptic background, probably in his fifties, intelligent, animated and straightforward. Highly educated, he comes from a well-to-do Cairo family, but has chosen to come practice in this rural area, charging a nominal fee for consultations. By contrast, he tells us of his brother who practices psychiatry in San Francisco, California, making all sorts of money. He quickly diagnoses Denny's ailment. It is an intestinal bug, most likely food-borne, that is spreading to his other systems. By this time Denny is very weak, having not retained any food in over three days. We're getting up to go and Denny immediately needs to sit back down on the bench, looking like he's going to pass out. He's all gray, cold and clammy and the last time I ever saw him looking this good he was having a heart attack six years ago... I am freaking out, yet with my best measured and composed voice I mention that earlier medical event to the doctor. He's already taken Denny's pulse and blood pressure, which were fine, so he dismisses that possibility and instead puts a salt tablet on Denny's tongue. With all the fluids he's been losing -- and replenished only with water -- his electrolytes levels are just plain depleted. Dr. Boutros adds fizzy electrolytes packets to the prescription.
We swing by a pharmacy on the way back, where we find all the necessary antibiotics and supplements on the list.
The consultation and prescriptions cost us all of £145 LE, or about $24.00 US dollars. Local villagers only pay a fraction of that. No wonder they love him to pieces.
This morning Denny seems to have a bit more spark in his eyes, whereas I've had obsessive dreams all night (arranging and re-aligning countless unidentified carved stone blocks, over and over again, trying to make sense of them). Sisyphus pushing his boulder uphill... I'm trying to convince myself that the aches and pains are due to all sorts of hitherto unknown muscles that were awakened by my day of digging in the trench. But over breakfast I have to confront the evidence: I too have a fever, chills and feel like crap. I barely make it up the stairs to the room, running out of steam halfway.
I guess I'll get to see the good doctor Boutros again...
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