Monday 5th July
Woke up in Trebs, and the weather was back to normal.
OK, it’s Monday and hopefully we will get to see a doctor. Catriona has very kindly said she would organise one for us, living in France and speaking French like a native and knowing the system, perfect.
Soon after breakfast we received a message from Catriona, appointment booked for 11.00am and gave us the address. When I plugged the address into SatNav the results was impressive, the surgery was 3-minutes away. Many thanks Catriona, you’ve done it again👍👍👍👍
At the appointed time we arrived at the Doctor’s and after about a five minute wait, we were in. Fortunately during the morning I had written a short history of what had happened over the past week or so and thanks to Google translate, hey presto, it was all in French. When he had sat down I presented my ‘phone to him with fingers crossed the translate actually meant something; we’ve experienced times when “facts go in, and dribble comes out” but fortunately not on this occasion, he understood and between his moderate English and my poor French, we made headway. After blood pressure and Temperature tests followed by a “cursory” examination, as predicted he said I had an infection and needed antibiotics and gave me a prescription. He also told me to go the the Health Laboratory and have a urine test before swallowing the antibiotics tablets, but he said due to my “age” (red rag to a bull) I must get a taxi as it was about a 20-minute walk. We had a quick look to see if there was such a beast but no, so with the help of good old SatNav, we headed out; it was hot though, on the Pharmacy Sign it recorded 35-degrees.
Anyway, 20-minutes later, up hill 🥵🥵 we walked into the laboratory. Who would have thought such a small sleepy town would have a very large complex of laboratories!!! No queue so immediately given a container, which struggled to fill as I had just stopped en-route, handed it back in, paid my dues and was told I would get the results on line, on Wednesday and gave me the address, password and case number to achieve this; hopefully!!!!
Back down the hill and 20-minutes we were back on board; “at my age” huh.
After a quick lunch we were on our way, Carcassonne being our target. The canal up this end is much more interesting but the price is more locks. This journey is only 13 kms and 6- big and deep locks and there is more traffic so it was slow progress but more importantly there is a big hospital in Carcassonne and we can also moor-up in the centre of town, and should we need further medical treatment, this was handy.
As we progressed it was becoming blatantly clear my infection wasn’t going away and though I had taken two antibiotics pills, there was not even a small relief.
We arrived into the port basin and had a choice of berths so chose no-13, probably not the best choice under the circumstances, however we did fly from Antigua to Gatwick on Friday 13th at the start of the COVID thing so🤞🤞🤞🤞.
Resting after a days pottering on the canal usually brings things back to “sort-of-normal” so After dinner a couple of games of cards and then watching a re-run of the England V USA. Game from Twickenham we were hoping for improvement, but half way through the second half the decision was made to head to the hospital. By this time it was dark and fairly late but fortunately the main station was across the canal so picked up a taxi very quickly and on arrival he dropped us off at A&E.
There was a queue outside we think but hey, by-pass that, I am in trouble.
To cut a long boring story short, I was admitted and am writing this from my room in this massive hospital.
But that’s not all. Whilst all this was happening to me, poor ChristIne had to sit outside with all the people we thought were in the queue but fortunately it didn’t turn out to be a queue of people waiting admission but rather people like ChristIne waiting for news. COVID regulations, again!
Once the decision has been made to admit me, ChristIne had to get home and the 24hour Taxi company I had a card for, actually didn’t operate 24hours, and though the hospital ‘phoned on her behalf, it looked increasingly as if she would have to spend the night sitting and shivering outside A&E.
But we all know ChristIne is resourceful and she “collared” some poor old Frenchman (Not a word of English did he speak, good old google!) after he had deposited someone to the hospital she then “persuaded” him “can you please drop me at the port”!!!! “Oui Madame” he replied so ChristIne got back to Daisy, albeit in the early hours of the morning ( 2.45am )safe and sound; Thank you Monsieur, whoever you are, what a great chap