May Day! May Day!
May has been a bit of a drama production punctuated throughout by emergencies, crises and exclamation marks. It all started on market day, on a visit to La France. Every Thursday everybody and his tante descend on the Bastide Square to buy the week’s provisions and to exchange gossip at the market.
We woke up late as usual, with the church bells bonging away reminding us of our tardiness. No time for breakfast, I hopped out of the house while pulling on my dungarees and hurled myself into the 4x4.
Halfway there I was beginning to wake up and to feel peculiar. Suddenly pain began shooting through my back, tummy, chest and shoulders. The driver took one look at me and I saw sheer horror on his face. I knew I should have put some lippy on. He screeched through the tiny cobbled streets to the market square in the hope of finding a doctor there.
I remember him parking in the middle of the road in between stalls piled high with cheeses and fresh herbs. I could hear the squawking and quacking of caged chickens and ducks for sale. And then I was on the ground. A crowd gathered around and I could see a sea of black stockings and shoes. Suddenly everyone was pushed aside and two thumping great big gendarmes were kneeling beside me each holding one of my hands. I recognized the one with the missing middle finger. He had questioned us on our first arrival at the Moulin as suspected burglars. I could see their guns glistening in their holsters. Somehow this was very comforting and I clung on tightly. The driver returned with more gendarmes who were frantically radio-ing for le docteur.
At this point the village sirens started whining like the Blitz, putting the bastide on full emergency alert.
I heard concerned voices all around but all I could decipher was "Coup de Coeur".
"Oh my gawd!" I thought. "I can’t die here of a heart attack. I haven’t had breakfast, I’m not wearing any make-up and my dungarees are on back to front."
"Au Secours! "Au Secours!": I managed to whisper, as loudly as I could, while squeezing the gendarmes’ hands tightly. Apparently I then kept repeating, "Je ne veux pas mourir, ici." My big uniformed companions seemed terribly moved by all this and started urging the doctor and ambulance, which was stuck in the market traffic behind a pizza van, to get a move on.
Without warning huge burly arms appeared out of nowhere and lifted me up onto a stretcher and into an ambulance. Am I in heaven? I thought. No, I was not. Stripped to the waist and covered in sticky pads I lay still as the doctor took an ECG. The police, paramedics and firemen huddled around the open ambulance door to protect my modesty. "Her heart is fine," the doctor pronounced and left the vehicle. The doors were slammed, the paramedics set up a drip and covered me with a blanket and we raced to the town hospital emergency unit escorted by motorcycle outriders for more tests.
The Khyber Pass: I must say I was terribly impressed with the French hospital staff, treatment and equipment. They had me linked up to every machine and examined every portion of my anatomy, inside and out, with a frightening efficiency. Unknown to me the outriders and paramedics had caused a complete rumpus on arrival, and they were all waiting anxiously outside for news of my condition. After many hours and lots of questions and funny moments involving "ca-ca", that would be completely lost in translation, the doctors announced that I would live - but - I had gallstones.
I suddenly felt very ancient and a bit silly after all that fuss. Of course, as well as the usual medication, I was given suppositories and enemas to take home. After all we were in France and guessed I would not get away without something up my bum. They have a national passion about the bowels.
Carry on Doctor! Back home I visited the consultant surgeon, who disconcertingly had the demeanor of Robert Morley in a Carry On movie.. After telling me off for being late, classic unconscious resistance to a painful experience which came to be a feature of our patient/doctor relationship, he booked me into the clinic for removal of a stone stuck in my bile duct and my gall bladder: two operations over two consecutive days.
As the date grew closer I began to wind myself up and everybody made light of it and tried to encourage me to be brave. I was just about managing this when I happened to watch Richard and Judy on telly discussing an Andy Warhol art exhibition. Oh my old mate, I thought. They mentioned his early death and someone informed us that he died following the removal of his gall bladder! You what?! I went into full-scale panic.
The next morning I waited on a trolley at the back of a queue of yellow-faced patients, livers working overtime, all waiting for the same operation. I had just about managed to get Warhol off my mind. Suddenly the consultant appeared, sat at the end of the trolley, and began to reel off the dangers and mishaps that could occur while I was under anesthetic. I prepared for the worst as I was wheeled down to the theatre.
