A Bump in the Road?

Okay, so today could have gone better. On the other hand, it could have been worse. So, two paths diverged in a wood and I: I chose the "it could have been worse" path, and hopefully, that will make all the difference.

Fade in.... Michelle hears the garbage trucks and rolls over in the bed she is now sharing with the XX chromosomed parent, since Hillary has arrived. She looks at her watch. 6:30. She closes her eyes and tries to fall back asleep.

But Mom is restless in the bed next to her. Michelle remembers that when she went to bed last night, she laid down on something hard and unforgiving: Mom's cane. Michelle reaches down, holds up the cane and as Mom takes it she tries to go back to sleep again.

Mom fumbles around a bit more.

"What are you doing? It's not even seven." Michelle wants to be sleeping.

"I hate to tell you this, but my leg really is hurting."

Michelle ponders this, then finally asks:

"Hurting like aching? or hurting like out of place?"

"Like out of place."

Now Michelle has been pretty confident with the French this time around, however she is not thrilled at the prospect of calling a French ambulance and dealing with the associated chaos. When presented with this idea, Mom is not all too interested in it either so we decide to take a cab to the American Hospital.

alright, I am already sick of this third person point of view crap. Back to first. This is my blog, after all, I can change points of view whenever I want.

Okay, so mom sits calmly drinking her coffee with a dislocated hip while I try to call our recommended cab driver, Phillipe, to come get us. He had already been working on getting us a ride to the train station on Saturday morning, so he assumed that was what I was calling about until I apprised him of the new situation. (oh, hi, my mom's leg is busted, so can you drive us to the hospital? who can say no to that...) He said he could be here in a half an hour so we all scurried to get ready to go (me not so conveniently forgetting my phone after an epic search for Mom's previous hip xrays.) He called when he was ten minutes away and by the time we got the now exceptionally gimpy Momma to the curb he was just pulling up. She had to stand since the wheelchair does not fit in the ridiculously small elevator unless it is closed. I must remember at a later time to discuss French elevators.

Turns out Philippe our cab driver was a sweetheart. His English was excellent and he definitely didn't have a French accent which was explained later when he told us he'd lived in Sydney for 2 years. A native Parisian with an Aussie accent: priceless.

In any event, I had briefly considered wheeling la maman to the hospital... on the map it didn't look so far... turns out it was about 6 miles. Granted, after doing 60 miles a few short weeks ago, six doesn't seem like such a big deal, but it turned out the cab was a good choice.

*SHORT TIME OUT FOR A COMMENTARY ON SOCIALIZED MEDICINE*

There was no wait in the ER. She was seen immediately. She was examined immediately after triage by an actual doctor. She was immediately taken to Xray where we waited maybe ten minutes, she was immediately sent back to the ER and given pain meds. It did take a while for the orthopedist and anesthesiologist to arrive but they did, after 1/2 hour, tops, and within three hours of our arrival she was in the OR getting jammed back together. The patient care end of things with universal health care was seamless, fast, and efficient. They did ask for a sizeable "deposit" which they don't actually charge you, they just hold your card number and when you leave you can ask for 60 days in which to pay which is (hopefully) more than enough time for your insurance company to deal with the bills and cough up the dough. The health system was nothing if not accomodating.

The "relatives of the patient" side of things, however, left a bit to be desired. I was included in everything from the ER arrival up to them actually taking her away for the surgery - probably because I actually speak French, and many of the orderlies/transport people were a bit weak in the anglais...but once she was sent off to surgery, nobody could tell me and HKD where she was or what had become of her. Seriously, it was weird. This should have been called Charles de Gaulle Hospital, because, just like in his airport, there were no seats. There was no actual "waiting room" except for the ER waiting room where people waiting for the ER doctor wait to be seen.

So Hillary and I basically wandered around, for hours, since there was really nowhere to wait. There is no such ting as the doctor coming out and telling you the surgery is over and how things went - we never saw that guy again. At one point we got a room number and went to wait in the room. However, the bed was unmade and it had clearly not been prepared for a new patient. I went down to the nurses station and asked and they told me yes, it was the right room, but it wasn't cleaned yet and therefore we couldn't wait there, because it still needed to be "sanitized."

So we went back to the ER. They told us if we wanted information about Madame Weagle we should go to admitting. I visited my friend who had taken my "deposits" in admitting and he said she was out of surgery and was waiting for the room in the ER.

We went back to the ER and they said she was not there, she was in recovery. There was a recovery unit on the third floor: she was not there. So Hillary and I decided to just pace around the area surrounding room 322 until she appeared.

Who DID appear was the cleaning crew and they do NOT mess around with disinfecting hospital rooms in France. They scrubbed the ceiling, the floor, the furniture.... every inch of that place was spotless and germ-free. Hillary and I went to get a snack at the "tea room" (What the heck, this is supposed to be the American Hospital, not the British Hospital...) and when we got back the cleaning people finally finished up and I asked my new best friend at the nurses station (whose English was a good deal worse than my French) when she was coming and he said soon. Mind you, this whole time Mom had been without her glasses and thus, for all intents and purposes, blind, and could not really communicate with anyone around her. HKD and I had been waiting around for...oh... four hours since she'd been out of surgery and nobody had sought us out, despite the fact that, as mom said later, she repeatedly told the doctors and nurses to tell us to leave and go "do" Paris.

Finally she reappeared and she was fine - no pain.

She didn't want us waiting around anymore, so I cleared up a few things with my new French best friend (vegetarian meals, what is the phone number for the room, etc) and HKD and I left, taking the bus back past the Eiffel Tower. Tomorrow that is on the agenda... mom and the albatross on the bus to the tower. It was actually a little weird, not having the albatross... I felt like I was missing something.

We came back, made a few phone calls ...

"Uh, Dad,... hi, Mom's in the hospital... again..."

and then headed out. Our goal was to scope out a boat trip on the Seine that claims to be "handicapped accessible" but as I discovered, that train stop is on the same line as the Eiffel Tower one I tried that first day we attempted the metro: shut down. So instead I tried to find a bus line to take us there.

Major fail.

In the end we hopped on a bus and ate a a café at Place du Chatelet. We ordered cheeseburgers which, translated into English on the menu, were made of "hacked meat." This turned Hillary off, but I did point out that they were just being more honest than Americans when we say ground beef...

After dinner we walked along the Seine and caught the Metro back home. I called the Mom and she is happy... private quiet room with TV and gourmet French hospital dining.

All you blog readers out there, don't fear for Mrs. Susan J. Weagle. All is well and we fetch her tomorrow in the a.m.

I am exhausted... it is 11:30 here.

À demain, mes amis,

MLW