Since injuring my ankle on June 22nd, I have seen four different doctors.

The first one, in the hospital, couldn't examine my it properly as it was too swollen. Fair enough. He did X-ray it and he did tell me it wasn't broken.

The second doctor, a few days later, didn't even touch my foot and looked at it very briefly. He gave me an aircast to put on it but didn't show me how to use it. He told me I should decide myself if I could make my planned trip to the mountains in Poland, ten days from then.

I decided to find a new doctor.

The third doctor, the next day, showed me how to use the aircast. He X-rayed me again a week later and confirmed that my ankle wasn't broken or fractured. He told me not to put any weight on my foot and to tie the aircast as tightly as possible to my ankle all day, every day for the next four weeks. He told me to come back in mid August, when he would be able to tell me if my mid-September Mont Blanc trip would have to called off or not.

Last week I noticed that my ankle and leg were getting alarmingly thin, and my skin was reacting badly to the constant pressure of the aircast. My foot was constantly swollen for the same reason.

So today I went to a new doctor, highly recommended to me by one of my students. He informed me that if I had followed Doc 3's advice for the next four weeks, I'd need surgery to correct the damage to my foot. He instructed me to start walking immediately (I should have started a week ago) in order to re-grow the muscles that have died away. He informed me that the pigmentations on my skin caused by the aircast probably won't ever properly go away.

My initial euphoria at finally feeling like I'm on the road to recovery is slowly becoming diluted with extreme anger at the amount of incompetence has been shown by people who frankly cannot be trusted to look after their patient's well-being.