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!

Politically Correct

I’ve just spent one of my regular weeks in the UK, visiting family, friends and Marks and Spencer.  It was the week leading up to the European elections so naturally there was much discussion in the media about Brexit and how strange/stupid it was that Britain was still in the position to have to elect EMPs.  All of this (as usual) went a bit over my head as being a permanent French resident apart from having the final document, I seem to have no voting rights in any country.  Or so I thought…

I returned home to find a Voting Card and a large envelope full of leaflets outlining the manifestos (or manifestiii?) for about 27 different parties all pleading with me to vote for them!  To be honest I wasn’t particularly interested but the voting card says ‘To Vote is a Right, and also a Civic Duty” so I thought I would have a bit of a read.

In the ‘olden days’ it was much easier – you had the 2 or 3 major parties and the Monster Raving Loony Party for whom you voted if you wanted to prove a point.  Among all my leaflets it was hard to see which were the ‘Loony’ parties and which were the ‘normal’ ones, but I finally made a choice and went off to the polling station.

Access to the hall was difficult as this is a small village and the entrance was blocked by what seemed to be the entire population exchanging greetings and kisses.  Unlike the UK system where you are given a voting slip and disappear discretely behind a curtain to tick a box, in France you are given a small brown envelope and are directed towards a table with all the leaflets from all the parties (including some new ones I hadn’t even seen before).  You then take your chosen leaflet into the ‘booth’, fold it up and put it in the little envelope.  Everybody in the hall can therefore see who you are voting for – but I’m guessing that some of the more secretive voters had taken several leaflets as a kind of ‘smokescreen’ as the bin in the booth was full of screwed up documents.  The Green Party would be furious at the waste of paper!  The Mayor himself then signs your voting card and off you go.

 I see this morning that Marine Le Pen’s party has won and I can assure you this was not my fault.