claires cast news. a long read, sorry i got carried away!!

Yey!! The moment I have been waiting for has finally happened!! My cast is off!

I thought it would be a relatively straight forward procedure, go to the hospital, wait to see someone, get the cast off and have the wire taken out, then I can get on with things like swimming and surfing and everything I’ve been looking forward to doing when I have 2 hands instead of 1 1/2. But no!! This is me we’re talking about and I’m in France.

On the day that my cast could finally be removed, Dom and I went to the hospital in the nearest town to be told to ‘come back in a week’. Not entirely unexpected that I’d need an appointment but I was guttered a cast on for a week longer than necessary!!! Anyway, there wasn’t much we could do about this so we waited the week out. While the weather got hotter and hotter and my cast got filled with mosquito bites and sand. On the day of the next hospital trip I went with Jules as Dom had to stay back on site and wait for clients. Was kind of good in a way as Jules has more French than Dom and I put together. This came in handy the moment we walked through the hospital doors and presented ourselves.

In France before you see a doctor or have anything done you have to have all details of yourself and any insurance you have recorded into the computer. Entering in all this took almost an hour of Jules and I trying to communicate to the lady across the table – without speaking any English that – I was an English citizen with an E111 health card but no English address. I don’t speak much French but I live in France but not at the same address my health insurance is recorded at. I have snow insurance when I’m living in the hottest, flattest part of France and yes it is still valid. And lastly I’m a New Zealander. None of this fitted very well into the boxes on her computer screen. Even when 3 other people tried to have a go at doing it. It was a bit of a laugh though all the while I’m wondering if I’m ever going to get past this stage to having the cast off!!!

However, luck was on my side and it made it through to the lady with the bright pink plastic shoes and the scary cast saw. After a good 15 mins of sawing and cutting and pulling and making me feel very sick my cast came off. What a shock! There seemed to be a few details that my French surgeon forgot to mention to me after my keyhole surgery where a wire was put into my thumb to reattach the bone I chipped off in my skiing accident…the biggest thing he forgot to tell me was that instead of keyhole surgery, he had infact cut my thumb open and I had 14 grim looking stitches down a massive curved cut. My thumb looks distinctly like Frankenstein’s! Not ideal! I took a few moments to recover from the grossness of it all. Embarrassingly enough I have to admit that the majority of this time was spent lying on the corridor floor with the pink shoed lady holding my feet in the air while 3 bewildered French people looked on! The shame!

The upside to all this was that I didn’t have to walk to x-ray, though I would rather have. In the next embarrassing episode of the day, a bed was got for me and Jules was instructed to push me round the hospital in it. That again attracted more stares as by then I was feeling fine and Jules and I spent the whole trip in hysterical laughter at the situation!

Anyway, x-ray done, I was finally allowed to see the surgeon who would take out the wire sticking out of my thumb. Turns out it was getting a bit late in the day for him to be doing work and so after chatting to him for a bit, which was really him just laughing at the silly people in front of him he decided that he would take out the wire maybe next week instead! Ridiculous!

So that leaves me back at the campsite with an appointment in a week with a wire sticking out of my thumb. Excellent.

Ha ha. How I love traveling. I’ll make sure our next blog entry is a happier one (and a bit shorter too. Sorry I got a bit carried away!)