By now, I should have added a blog piece about a June visit to Ile de Re where I had booked a beautiful looking hotel close to the harbour in St Martin…but the gods had other plans for us.

As I wrote at the end of my last entry I caught covid on the return journey from the UK and ‘I’m only the chauffeur’ followed suit. For about ten days we coughed and suffered and kept to the house and garden until we tested negative again, me on a Tuesday morning, himself on the Thursday. On the Friday evening Lou started to stagger about and said he felt dizzy. We assumed vertigo and I googled if this was a possibility after having covid. The information suggested it was.

On Monday morning, after I had helped him down the stairs so I could change the bed he’d lain in all day Sunday, I decided to ring the doctor and say we couldn’t make the rendezvous the next day, could he make a house call, please. This unleashed a series of events as a result of various phone calls and we ended up in an ambulance blue lighting its way to our local hospital ‘urgences’ as our doctor had anxiously muttered about AVC….stroke!

Our nearest hospital is a modest affair so the casualty department has an accueil, which took his details, a small waiting room that I sat in for the next six hours, a toilet and a coffee machine that only took coins. I didn’t have any! So a long afternoon with no WiFi or sustenance (I only have WiFi at home) but occasional texts to family and friends. Eventually I was called through the double doors and as I watched my husband wheeled away a nurse called back that scans had been done, he hadn’t had a stroke, it was vertigo and they would keep him in overnight.

A good friend was on standby to pick me up which she did after finishing her work shift nearby and she drove me home, still a bit befuddled at how the day had turned out.

Next morning I received a text from himself saying baldly, ‘I need you’. I texted back, needing to know if he was being sent home, but no reply, so off I went, assuming he was coming home. But he wasn’t. After a morning of sitting next to his bed, horrified at how poorly he was, a nurse finally explained he was being admitted to a ward upstairs. As was going to happen now and again later, things got lost in translation. I thought I was waiting for the doctor, medecin, when in fact he was going to the ‘service de medecine’ ie medical ward.

And there he stayed for the next four weeks. After the first one, our eldest son, blessed with the possibility to work from home, came out to give his elderly mum some support. ‘You’re post covid too, mother, you need help’. So I found myself being cooked for every evening after days listening to video conferences going on in our spare room with what seemed like the four corners of the world. Modern life, eh?

We both visited the poorly one, searching each time for evidence of improvement. Sometimes it was very little in which we were taking comfort. The vertigo medicine didn’t seem to be making any difference and disinterested in eating or drinking he was put on a drip while the doctor tried to organise an MRI scan to see what it might uncover.

As a small hospital big investigations like MRIs have to be done at other, larger ones. Here in la France profonde, we are in a medical desert, as the newspapers and regional government call it, so pressure is heavy on services elsewhere. Eventually a space was found at Brive, a hospital ‘I’m only the chauffeur’ had visited for day surgery a couple of times. Just as well he had, as it turned out. Lou was duly sent off for his MRI on a Friday afternoon and brought back in time for supper. A rendezvous with the Brive neurologist was set for the following Thursday.

An ambulance was organised once more by the hospital and after an enthusiastic reception of my request to accompany him I was told I must be there for 6.50am. Hard for someone who doesn’t really start fully functioning until midday! In reality, it was nearer 7.30am before we got going. No blue lights which disappointed himself. By now he was a lot better than he had been but still unable to walk and lacking hand/eye co-ordination plus suffering brain fog as son and I had christened it.

At the hospital in Brive our arrival seemed a complete mystery to the secretary at the accueil who was further discombobulated by the fact this patient had turned up minus certain vital effects, namely his carte vitale, which was sitting in his change bowl on the kitchen table chez nous. Eventually, as I beginning to panic he wouldn’t be seen, she asked if he had ever been treated at her hospital. Oh, yes, I said, a hernia operation a few years ago. Bingo, computer said oui!

The interview with the neurologist which followed was harrowing for me and for our son. Watching my husband and his father stagger around the room, unable to follow instructions was a sad experience and all those things we’d been telling ourselves were improvements seemed nonsensical and just wishful thinking. Gav had travelled into Brive by train as only one family member could accompany the patient in the ambulance. I felt so sorry for him having to travel home alone after such an experience.

The neurologist had decided that the poorly one should transfer to Brive hospital ‘after the holiday weekend’ for further tests and monitoring. The next lunchtime I sauntered in to see him, as I had been doing for the last month to help him with his midday and evening meal, to be greeted with the news he was off to Brive that afternoon.

Already that morning, needing to get home, Gav had pedalled off to Biars station to catch the 6.20am train to Brive for his connection to Paris, only to find it was cancelled. He texted me and I catapulted out of bed while texting him I was on my way! Wrangling his bike into the car I promised him we would make it on time…and we did.

So to be told Lou was off to Brive that afternoon meant I would be driving there again to make sure he was settled in comfortably. Despite living here for nineteen years he can still only manage a handful of French words which makes times like this pretty complicated.

But I needn’t have worried. When I arrived, he was ensconced in a single room on the ninth floor and had already been welcomed by a young male nurse who spoke good English and told him he came from Brittany. While I was there two aide soignantes came in to ask how often he would like a shower. Bliss, he’d only had bed baths for ages and his hair hadn’t been washed. Plus a dietician would be in later to ask which foods he preferred. Hospital? Or spa?

At Brive his health continued to improve steadily while I became more and more exhausted. The drive was an hour each way and the weather turned very warm. Keen to improve his hand/eye co-ordination I took in board games and cards. Finally, as his hand control improved, he started to use his mobile phone to communicate with myself and the boys. This was an enormous breakthrough and huge relief to us all. He even agreed to a few facetimes with our grandson, something he had avoided for weeks.

There were a lot of tests including ones where electrodes were stuck on his head and legs. Meanwhile, Lou fretted about the size of the meals. He appreciated how good they were but his appetite wasn’t equal to them. At St Cere, the staff became so desperate about his lack of appetite they asked me to take in something he liked that they could reheat. He has always joked that beans on toast is his comfort food so beans on toast it was! Thankfully, things had changed. The dietician reappeared and ordered half portions which satisfied everyone. A male orderly, who gave him his showers, neatened up his beard for him and he began to look like my husband again.

Eventually, the neurologist arrived one Thursday afternoon and told us certain results would take up to two to four weeks to come back so Lou was to transfer back to St Cere until they did. I was mighty relieved to be saved the driving which I was finding really draining but himself was sad to leave the place in which he felt so comfy. A nurse bustled in and told me not once but twice that she was organising his return which would take place the following Tuesday after another MRI on the Monday to see if anything had changed.

That weekend I counted down the hours until that drive wasn’t a daily occurrence. On the Monday I bought his customary coffee from the little cafe in the entrance and took the lift to the ninth floor. I walked in with a smile to be greeted with ‘I’m not going until Thursday’. My reaction was ‘Yeah, right’, as ‘I’m only the chauffeur’ is prone to that kind of joke. But he wasn’t joking. And I stopped smiling and actually shed a tear or three. Two more days of that hot drive!

Apparently, the big cheese of the neurology department wanted to do an MRI lumbaire which couldn’t take place until the Wednesday due to pressure on the system. So I dug up a smile and braced myself for two more days of ‘that’ drive. The hot weather was bringing dark skies and torrential rain, not the most ideal driving conditions…

I told myself that I wasn’t being completely selfish about wanting him to return to St Cere. At Brive he was comfy but on the ninth floor and hadn’t sat in the fresh air for over six weeks. At St Cere there was a small area with lawns, shady trees and benches where visitors brought their loved ones in wheelchairs to sit and chat.

It would be wonderful to get Lou out into the sunshine, he had missed a glorious spring despite the intermittent rain storms. Also, up until now, he had refused to have anyone other than me visit him but now he was clearly getting tired of me and, in the manner of a royal decree, said he was ready for some! St Cere was more easily accessible to anyone who wanted to do so. Earlier, whilst at St Cere, he had begun to have regular physiotherapy which had stopped when he went to Brive and I was determined to ask for that to start again.

And all those things happened. He began to walk again on a zimmer every day with the same young physio, Fanny, and he had his first visitors other than me. I got him outside in a wheelchair too, although the first day we planned it for there was torrential rain all afternoon, clearly the weather gods had decided against us!

The first time I visited near suppertime I was surprised and delighted to see he could manage a knife and fork with his meal. The last time I had seen him eat it was with a fork and a very wobbly delivery. I hadn’t been able to stay until his evening meal at Brive…that drive! Perhaps due to all this improvement and feeling so much better Lou told me he felt a bit like a spare leg, perhaps taking the place of someone more needy. He was tucked away at the end of a corridor with a new doctor who seemed keen to sort him out once and for all. One day, she announced that she felt it would be much better for his morale and continued progress if he was to come home for a while with a return to the hospital later for re-education. We were delighted but worried that our house wouldn’t come up to scratch for a disabled occupant. Calming our concerns, she proposed a prescription for a wheelchair, a commode and a zimmer frame for me to collect from the pharmacy. At the same time, organising a rendezvous for me with Fanny with photographs of our entrance steps and rooms plus measurements of doorways etc.

I carefully measured and photographed and returned on the Friday morning to see the physio. She was pleased that our rooms were spacious and said she would take Lou out on the fire escape to practise stairs the following Monday. Meanwhile, she gave me a lesson in how to walk with him on the zimmer. The doctor came in a few moments later saying Fanny had been very happy and handed me the prescription. As easy as that?

Not quite. First I had to sort out a bed for the living room which brilliant friends helped me move from our gite. I kept up the pretence it was a single bed with himself but, in reality, I could just squeeze the gite’s double bed into a space in our living room and still be able to use the room as our sejour. I visited the pharmacy and ordered the various boys toys which I was able to collect later the same day…it was all going ahead so quickly.

On the following Monday I received a phone call from the ward to say he had managed the fire escape stairs very well and would be coming home that afternoon….and he did! Eight weeks to the day since he had been rushed in.

We still don’t know what went wrong or how long, if ever, before he will regain full mobility although he has another lovely young lady giving him physio three times a week. The doctors appear to be scratching their collective heads about a diagnosis although we have a rendezvous in August with the Brive neurologist who may have some answers. But for now we are both under the same roof and really appreciate it!

NB throughout this nightmarish episode family, friends and neighbours have been fantastic in their support. It has been greatly appreciated and will not be forgotten. Merci bien every last one of you..