First Repair: My Father's Arm

Preparing a field-season is a matter of repairing equipment. If possible, also of acquiring some new items. In this new series I will write of our preparations, as they are unfolding in the weeks before departing for the river. I cannot wait for my father to set foot at the camp and install the cameras. I keep my fingers crossed that those first recordings will tell us that Boldy and his family are alive and well.

But first and foremost my dad has to be fit and healthy to handle the challenges of living in the wilderness in his little tent camp. Yulian is turning 80 this summer. Despite his phenomenal strength (mind, body, spirit and determination) the first repair had to be of his right arm. There was an aneurism of the main artery there. Due to some heavy work three years ago, the artery was suddenly distended. Not troubling about it at first, my father carried on as usual. As it turned out at the first medical check belatedly made on 20 March this year, the aneurism had been growing slowly the whole time. The artery which was supposed to be 8 mm in diameter (at most!), had reached the width of 5 cm. Intervention was urgently needed.

The best clinic for the surgery was chosen: the Acibadem City Clinic in Sofia. Costly, to be sure, but fellow-sufferers claimed it had the best surgeons this side of the Ukrainian front.

The Acibadem provided scenes of great suffering proving how difficult it is to mend the human body, and how easy to destroy it. My father’s complaint was mainly about the food. He pronounced it "chopped cardboard". For the whole duration of his stay I would receive daily snapshot of something bland in a plastic container on a hospital tray. It has to be noted Yulian is a great cook who cooks from a scratch and everything in his pantry is homemade. So the struggle, I imagine, was very real.

The operation was performed on 28 March. For faster healing my father was moved to a better room with a shiny bathroom . The best part was he had it all for himself and the best part: he could be free from a TV that was on all the time (and late into the night as some fellow-sufferers in the previous room would insist). 

The food was unrelentingly tasteless but, the main thing was that on 28 March the arm had been successfully operated on and the aneurism - removed.

On Monday, 31 March, the arm was proclaimed repaired enough to let my father go back home. The promise was that the limb would be fully functional in the space of a month. Thus, the first repair became a fact. There were many more in a long list. The priority now was his four-wheel bike. Of this patient and long-suffering beast, we will tell you in the next story.