Deb has not had the best of weeks. On Tuesday, the trip to Le Mans for x-rays worked fine, but the radiographer was very brusque, pushing and pulling Deb around on his magic slab with scant regard for her comfort – or her injuries, it seemed. At least she got back in time for a late lunch – which was re-heated for her. Her room-mate (85) the previous day had been out for 8 hours and hardly eaten - at one point they took her blood pressure and found it to be 23, that’s 230 in UK terms, all due to the poor admin on her day out!
Thursday should have been Deb’s day for going to Le Mans again, to have pins removed. Err, no. She went to Le Mans alright, but on arrival found the doctors were on strike. It also emerged that she was not there for pin removal, but to be checked out for allergies to various anaesthetics etc, and to have her fitness for the operation verified. Sadly, the sole anaesthetist on duty – i.e. not on strike – had rather a lot on her plate, and none of Deb’s papers, which were at Le Grand Luce, where the surgeon was making his fortnightly visit – to see Deb among others. On returning to Le Grand Luce, by which time the surgeon had left, of course, Deb enquired politely about the papers, only to be told that had the people in Le Mans not been playing silly b*****s, they would have rung Le Grand Luce and faxed copies could have been provided. So now Deb has to go to Le Mans again on Monday (with her papers, natch) so the team there can assure themselves that she is fit to be operated on, on Tuesday… Apparently it is the right wrist and the left foot that are to be relieved of their ironwork. One has to say that this is an extraordinarily high level of care for the patient, but we feel it a little unnecessary when Deb had spent several days under anaesthetic at Rouen and clearly lived to tell the tale. No matter, today she has had an ECG and a chest x-ray (the recalcitrant x-ray machine at Le Grand Luce was persuaded to produce a passable image at the second attempt, apparently) to confirm that she probably won’t peg out on the operating table come Tuesday!
Since the physiotherapist is on a long weekend off, he had kindly briefed Deb on how to do simple exercises on her right knee, and we spent 15 minutes helping her do those. She may see him Tuesday morning before her 4th trip to Le Mans, but if not, circumstances mean she will not have enjoyed supervised therapy from Wednesday to Wednesday, which is hardly the idea in her condition.
French healthcare is famously world class, but the scope for cock-up on the admin side knows no bounds either, we feel….
