You never run out of things that can go wrong!

I was so excited about my Son and his wife coming to stay for their summer holiday and wasn’t even panicked when he asked if his friends and their toddler could come too – it gave us exactly the deadline we needed to finally get our ‘Gite’ project finished and ready for occupation.  I had loads of ideas of how we would spend our time – lying by the pool, trips to the beach, local markets, meals out in lovely restaurants – and had even planned a big party during their stay.

Day 1 – All went very well – lovely convivial evening together eating and drinking on the terrace and watching the sunset.

Day 2 – Not too bad – went to the shops to get more mosquito repellant as daughter-in-law being bitten to death (everybody else was fine as they were just concentrating on her!).  In the evening the ‘young’ all decided to go off to Thuir for a meal – no room at any restaurant and they ended up at the Buffalo Grill where they waited 1½ hours for a badly cooked meal, but too hungry to give up and move on!

Day 3 – Disaster –The fact that we had been so busy working on the Gite and  preparing for the party meant that I was more than ready to relax and enjoy myself.  Unfortunately I ‘relaxed’ so much (possibly due to not much food and too much wine) that I danced myself off the terrace!  Apart from having a bruised bottom and grazed elbows I thought I had got off lightly, and went to bed.

Day 4 – Not good – Somehow managed to get up and make a coffee.  Surprisingly my head didn’t feel too bad but perhaps that was due to the fact that the rest of my body was hurting instead!  I made a start on clearing the debris from the tables in the garden and was at first dismayed to see the toddler appear with her mum (was in no state to be chatty with a 2-year old!) but actually she was useful as I found I couldn’t bend down to pick up the paper plates and napkins that had fallen so as she was already much nearer the ground, she did it!  Went back to bed after an hour – pausing only to deliver an aspirin to J-M who I had found fast asleep in the spare room with his hand resting on a cold cup of coffee.  The ‘young’ ones somehow managed to make their way into Perpignan in the evening to enjoy the ‘Thursdays of Perpignan’ summer evening show.  (NB not my son, who also spent most of the day in bed, only coming downstairs to ask for a mop and bucket) (and a Croque Monsieur later!))

Day 5 – Very bad – Decided to go to the Doctor as I was unable to move very far without waves of pain in my rib.  He gave me a prescription for some very strong pain-killers and sent me for an urgent x-ray just in case anything was in danger of piercing my lung.   Several hours later the x-ray showed that I had just ‘detached’ something so in a wave of euphoria that I wasn’t about to die of a punctured lung we decided to go out for a meal at the lake.  Getting in and out of the car took longer than the car journey, and I discovered that resting your elbows on the table is not only bad manners but extremely painful.  I also put an end to ‘dry’ Friday (before taking the painkiller!)

Day 6 – And getting worse – The ‘drugs’ seemed to be working as long as I didn’t make any sudden movements.  J-M however was limping badly – he had jumped off the terrace to ‘rescue’ me when I fell, forgetting that he had only recently recovered from breaking his foot a few weeks ago.  Emma (mother of Toddler) was feeling very ill with a flare-up of tonsillitis.  It was obvious she needed antibiotics but as it was a Saturday morning all the GP surgeries were closed so the only option was to send them off to the hospital.  No sooner had they left, Oliver (Son) appeared with blood all over his t-shirt from a wound on his head – having walked into the corner of one of the awnings on the terrace.  Luckily it didn’t need stitches but he spent a very quiet day after that!

Day 7 – Some improvement – In hindsight perhaps choosing a restaurant in Castelnou – a medieval town perched on a hill with steep cobbled streets – was not the best choice for such a group of walking wounded and and we must have looked quite comical as we made our way slowly up the hill; Me clutching my ribs, J-M limping, Samantha stopping every 5 minutes to scratch her bites, Emma still feverish with her tonsillitis, and Oliver wearing a hat! 

But despite all that, they seem to have had a good time - and these photos prove that you should never believe the pictures you see on Facebook - there is often a story behind it!

  

Hospital Hostilities

At 11.30am last Wednesday I was just leaving a client’s house when my partner telephoned  – “Hello it’s me.  Are you far away?  I’ve fallen.  Can you pick me up from the Doctor’s surgery?”  He didn’t go into any more detail so I guessed that there was something pretty serious going on – and I was right.  I arrived at the surgery at the same time as the Samu ambulance and the Pompiers (normal in France) and found him lying on an examination table with scrapes all down one side, a very painful foot, and in considerable pain.  He had lost control of his scooter and fallen off into a ditch, and had then been rescued by 2 old men who managed to drag him into their car and into the surgery, which just happens to be very close by. 

It was pretty obvious he would need X-rays and have the ‘scrapes’ patched up which would take some time so I waved him off in the ambulance and went to deal with the practicalities of the situation - going home to let the dogs out, making myself a snack and then trying to track down the scooter.

I turned up at the hospital at 3ish with sandwiches, drinks, a walking stick and some undamaged clothes, expecting to be able to bring him home. Wrong. He was in a ‘treatment’ room with dressings on his ankle/hip/elbow/shoulder and had two drips plugged in.  Every now and then a doctor or a nurse would come in and either do a blood test or recommend another X-ray, but apart from that, there was not a lot of ‘treatment’.  At 5pm he was wheeled into the corridor to join a queue of people on trollies waiting for scans or X-rays and then there was a complete ‘lull’ as, I assume, the staff went off for their evening break.  At 8pm he, and several others, decided to form a mass break-out and managed to persuade a terrified passing orderly to remove their drips.  We found a wheel-chair and started moving towards the exit – but unfortunately had to pass through a ‘Discharge’ office where a dragon lady persuaded us that we would receive no results or reports unless the doctor had signed the papers. 

At 9.30pm a group of us were standing in the corridor outside the Doctor’s office, chatting about how long the waiting time had been and how things had changed for the worse, when a furious Doctor suddenly appeared and absolutely blew his top in true Basil Fawlty fashion, shouting that our comments were not helpful, we had no right to criticise the system and that if we were that concerned we should go and join the Yellow Jacket protestors.  (I must point out that despite the fact that I use the word ‘we’, I’m English so had naturally been sitting quietly on a chair around the corner pretending not to be any part of the madness).   After a very heated debate the Doctor calmed down and when he explained that they were extremely short-staffed, they only had half the number of doctors required, and that he was already 10 hours into a 14 hour shift everybody sympathised with him and patted him on the back and wished him ‘bon courage’ etc.  

Once we were all friends again things moved pretty quickly – the Doctor wheeled my partner into another room, explained that he had broken a bone in his foot and badly sprained his ankle.  He was then put in a temporary plaster and then we left, clutching pages of prescriptions for pain-killers, injections, follow-up visit appointments and crutches.

Obviously I am very thankful as it could have been a lot worse (the injuries, not the visit to A&E) but having previously written a lot of positive comments about the French health system, it saddens me to see how bad the situation has become.

A more positive update will follow shortly!