Medical matters

Monday the 12th may was a bank holiday here (Pentecost)and N was very ill, he had been going downhill for some time and during the night he had agonising pains in his right side. I rang the duty doctor who asked us to go and see him immediately. When we got there he was very concerned and said that we should go to casualty straight away. He rang the hospital in Mont de Marsan and also wrote a letter for us to take in with us. It was very quiet in casualty and he was soon taken away to be examined. I waited for 3 hours and then it was decided that he should be admitted. The casualty department was very efficient and the waiting area was more like a hotel than a hospital. Comfy seating, lots of magazines and indoor plants. I don't understand why French hospitals don't have the disinfectant smell of English hospitals! I came back home to pack some things for him and then went back to find him in a very comfortable 2 bedded room with ensuite facilities. No other person in the other bed. He wasn't in the correct ward, pneumologie, as there was no room in there at that time. By the time I got there he had been settled in and was on a drip and feeling much more comfortable. He said that he was very happy to be there, that he felt safe there. Next afternoon he was moved to another 2 bedded room in the pneumologie ward. He shared the room with a man in his nineties who had a heart problem (don't know why he was in that ward!). A very pleasant chap who was very chatty and had loads of family visitors. Over the next few days N was seen by the doctor who prescribed the correct antibiotics for him and gave him many tests and x rays. I went in to see him every afternoon and he was soon feeling very much better. We had hoped that he may be able to come home on the Friday but there was some anomaly with the x-rays and they decided to keep him in for further tests. On the Saturday he was moved to a single bedded room which was very comfortable.
Sunday saw the arrival of N's parents, Peter and Thelma, at Bordeaux airport. I went up there to pick them up and we came back here via the hospital so that they were able to visit N. It was an easy drive up to the airport but it is much further than the trip I used to make up to Toulouse to pick up visitors. At least there was not the hell of the Toulouse ring road to cope with !!
Monday to Thursday I took Peter and Thelma out and about as well as visiting N in the late afternoon each day. A shame that the weather was not as it should be at this time of year, rain, rain and more rain with just the odd half day of sunshine when they could enjoy sitting out in the garden.
On Thursday Nigel came home. So good to have him back! He is much improved but obviously rather weak. We tried to impress upon him that he needs to take it easy for a while, not easy!!
Thelma and Peter left on the Monday after perhaps not the best of holidays for them with N being in hospital and the weather not behaving itself.
We visited Dr l'Heureux, N's consultant on the Tuesday. She is pretty sure that he has BOOP, bronchial obliterans organising pneumonia, and suggested that he may have to have a lung biopsy to confirm this. N was not happy about this and she said that she would be having a meeting with his hospital pneumologist to discuss his case and would keep us informed. She called the next day to say that they had decided that he should finish the course of steroids that he has been taking and then have a scan in a months time to see what was happening. So we now wait until the end of June and the next scan to see if we have a diagnosis. I think that we are very lucky to be here as the medical treatment is so good and efficient.