Ice cold

I felt a little sorry for the doctor yesterday. He's a fairly young man, maybe 40 or so, with a mostly thankless job. When he called me into his office, he asked me if my wrist and thumb joints were still swollen and hot. He reached out and took ahold of my right wrist. Yes, your wrist is still hot. What I noticed was that his hand and fingers felt ice cold. I'm sure they weren't, it's just that my wrists and hand are so hot. Feverish. What I have is "inflamed" joints, after all. The doctor seemed dejected about having to let me leave without having figured out what my condition is or being able to come up with a cure.

I'll go back to the pharmacy on Monday morning to get the doctor's prescription for Prednisolone filled. Then I'll start my one-week course of the drug. I don't want to go out today because I've already done too much driving this week. Turning the steering while hurts my wrists. The newer Citroën car (only 16 years old!) seems to have better power steering than the nearly 25-year-old Peugeot. The Citroën is a fairly staid sedan, designed and built for comfort. The Peugeot is a sportier car, designed and built for fun driving. Until now, I had never really understood that about the two cars.

Mystère

I just got home from a visit with my primary care physician (mon médecin traitant or GP). I took him a copy of the results of my bloodwork the other day. He looked the report over carefully and told me everything looks really good. He also said that whatever is going on with my wrists and the swelling is not what he suspected it was. Maybe it's an allergy, he half-muttered. I had a mysterious allergic reaction to something a few years ago, and I never found out what caused it. So we are back to square one. More later...

Where I spend my time these days

I thought I ought to post some photos today so that I don't forget how to process and post them. Here's where I've been spending nearly all my time for a couple of weeks now. It's called home.

Backsliding but adapting

Every day is a little different from the last. Maybe I've just been trying to do too much. Pharmacy and supermarket on Monday. Lab for bloodwork and another supermarket visit on Tuesday. Still, it is good to be out and about a little. Today, I will just rest. I'm still doing a lot better than I was a week ago, but not as well as the last time I posted here.

Better... much better

I am so much better this morning than I was just yesterday morning. Les jours se suivent et s'améliorent. I'm tempted to try to process and post some photos, but I keep telling myself to go slow and let my wrist and thumb get a little stronger before I start stressing them again. I need to go to the pharmacy and the supermarket this morning. That will be my hands and wrists excercise for the day.

Soon on the mend, maybe

I got in to see the doctor yesterday. Just convincing his assistant that I really needed an appointment was a strange experience. The first time I called, she said that the doctor didn't have any time to see me for at least the rest of the month. When I pressed her, she said I should call back the next morning at 8:05 a.m. (yes, 8:05) and ask again. It was like some kind of code or insider information.

I called yesterday at 8 :05 a.m. and the same woman answered. She asked me why I needed to see the doctor. I told her my right wrist was very swollen and was causing me a lot of pain. She hesitated for a second and then asked me if I could come in at noon. Yes, I said. Thank you.

I saw the doctor at noon — he has been our doctor for years — and he diagnosed my inflamed right wrist and a milder inflammation of  my left thumb joint. He said he could feel heat in the wrist joint, and he could see and feel the swelling (even though it was a lot less swollen than it had been at the beginning of the week).

As a result, he prescribed an anti-inflammation ointment, which I have to go get at the pharmacy today. He also prescribed a prise de sang (blood work), the results of which, he said, would give him a better idea about what's going on. I'll try to get an appointment for the blood test at the lab on Monday. 

 Meanwhile, I'm applying an Arnica montana ointment to the swollen wrist and painful thumb to continue getting the swelling and pain under control. It's a plant-based remedy that I bought on Amazon.fr. It reduces the swelling pretty quickly. And hey, I have successfully typed this relatively long post. Things are looking up.

Status report: not much change

The arthritis pain has moved from the left hand and arm to the right hand and arm. Otherwise, there's not much change in my my condition. I can type for a couple of minutes but then I have to stop because of the pain. I got the report from the radiology lab yesterday afternoon. Now I need to make an appointment with my GP doctor. We'll see what he prescribes and go from there...

Incapacitated

Over the past five or six days, I've been having more and more severe arthritis symptoms in my wrists and fingers. I can just barely type on my laptop's keyboard, with a lot of pain. I can't really use the mouse to select, crop, and edit photos. It's as if the pain I was having in my knees a few weeks and months ago has migrated to my wrists. I'll come back to the blog when I can. Wish me luck. Ken

Le Château d'Angé

Just across the Cher river from Montrichard and some of the châteaux I've posted about recently is the village of Angé (pop. 800) with its château and church. Don't confuse it with the city of Angers (pop. 150,000), which is about two hours west of Blois on the Loire river. The village of Angé is just eight miles west of Saint-Aignan. Angé and Angers are pronounced exactly the same.

I remember that CHM and I drove over to Angé years ago and we managed to get a glimpse of the château d'Angé, which was mostly obscured by big trees. I think I took a picture of it, but I can't for the life of me find it now. Above is an old postcard showing the château that I found on the internet. The château d'Angé is used as a retirement home/assisted-living facility these days. It was built in the 15th century and significantly modernized and modified in the 18th, from what I've read.

A bad day, I guess

 All I can tell myself is that she was having a bad day. I don't think I did anything that made it worse for her. I'm talking about the woman in charge of the radiology lab at the hospital in Saint-Aignan — the one who X-rayed my knees yesterday morning. I arrived at the hospital on time or a little bit early. I got checked in at the front desk, where a clerk examined my national health card (la carte Vitale) and my French national ID card (la carte de résident), entering some of the data on the cards onto her computer. She was very efficient and pleasant.

Then I went upstairs and sat in a waiting area (it wasn't a room but just a few chairs in a hallway) for 30 minutes. At exactly 10:30, which was the appointed time, the technician came out and ushered me into the radiology lab. She almost snapped orders at me, saying (in French of course): "Put your things on this chair." What things, I asked. "Your pants and your shoes," she barked — here it's pants and shoes." I did as instructed.  "Now come and stand on this platform. Hold onto these two handles, one on each side." The handles looked like light bulbs.

"Stand with your feet an inch or so apart. I tried to comply. She went behind a glass screen and yelled back at me: "Make sure your feet are parallel to each other." I thought they were. I adjusted their position slightly. The technician yelled from behind the glass screen: "You need to move your left foot closer to the right foot." I again moved that foot to comply. "Can you hear me over there?" she asked me.

Suddenly she came almost running from behind the glass screen toward me. She grabbed my left foot and moved it maybe a quarter of an inch, saying "If you don't cooperate, we'll never get this done."   I'm doing my best, I said. She took the X-ray of my two knees. It's true that maybe five minutes had gone by since I walked through the lab door and got undressed.

She went back behind the glass screen and yelled: "Now turn to the right 90 degrees and put your right foot slightly farther forward than the left." I did that. She came running out from behind the glass screen, grabbed my right leg, and pulled it slightly farther forward. "You have to bend your knee," she yelled. Okay, I get it, I was thinking. She X-rayed that knee.

Then she told me to turn to the left 180 degrees and do the same for the other leg. Are you sure you can hear me? she yelled. I was answering her in a normal voice, I thought. Once the second knee had been X-rayed, she said "Now turn left and face the back wall." I did that. I made sure my two feet were absolutely parallel to each other. "Your feet need to be touching each other!" she yelled. And then she pushed me from behind and said: "Your chest and abdomen need to be touching the wall!" She hadn't explained that. My big toes were touching the wall, but my chest wasn't. I was about to fall over.

And I felt like I was being manhandled. I didn't say anything, though, because there I was, my pants and shoes draped over a chair on the other side of the room. I had done my best to cooperate to the letter. It was over, and she said "Go get dressed!" I did so, and as I left she flashed what I thought was an exaggerated, rehearsed smile, and said: "I will mail your X-rays to you next week, and I'll also mail a set to your doctor. Do you understand me?" Oui, je lui ai dit. La semaine prochaine... Merci. Et bonne journée.

One odd thing: neither the woman at the front desk downstairs nor the x-ray technician had said a word about how and when I would pay for the appointment. The technician just said: "Okay, that's it. You can go now. You don't need to do anything else. Au revoir."

When I walked past the front desk downstairs, toward the front door, the first woman I had talked to earlier was on the telephone. So I just left. Maybe they'll send me a bill for their services one day soon. The hospital web site says patients can pay either by check or by bank card. 

Minimal post today

Here's one photo for today. I took it at Fougères-sur-Bièvre a while ago.

I'm not doing a full blog post today because I'm going this morning to get my knees x-rayed. Ironically, my knees have almost completely quit aching, cracking, and popping at this point. The pain seems to have moved on to my wrists, my thumbs, and my neck. Never mind. An appointment is an appointment, and I'll be going to the hospital in Saint-Aignan this morning to have my knees examined. At least I don't have to drive far. The local hospital is less than three miles from our house.

Le Château de Fougères-sur-Bièvre

Just 10 miles northeast of Montrichard, 10 miles south of Blois, and twelve miles north of Saint-Aignan". you'll find the village called Fougères-sur-Bièvre and its late 15th-century château — located "amid pine forests and fields of asparagus", the Signpost guidebook says. Fougères means "ferns" and the Bièvre is a small local river, only 15 miles long.

Bièvre is also an old French word meaning "beaver."

The Cadogan guide says that "Fougères looks defensively medieval with its masses turrets, its small irregular stones, and its inner courtyard paranoically enclosed on all four sides." The Cadogan's author describes the courtyard as "wonderfully atmospheric."

Montrichard sur le Cher

These are some photos of the town of Montrichard, the bridge across the Cher river there, and the old medieval tower that stands on the high ground on the right bank of the river. Montrichard is 10 miles northwest of Saint-Aignan. We go over there pretty often. We could have bought a house there, but for a lot of reasons we liked the house here in Saint-Aignan better than the four we saw in Montrichard when we were looking for a house to buy in the area back in December 2002.

Le Château du Gué-Péan, entre Saint-Aignan et Montrichard

This château is just five miles northwest of our house, in a village called Monthou-sur-Cher. It's had a new owner for the past few years and has been fixed up quite a bit since I took these photos. Le Gué-Péan was built as a hunting lodge in the 16th and 17th centuries, according to the guidebooks I have (Cadogan and Signpost). Its location in a verdant valley in the middle of a lush forest is attractive. The Cadogan guide calls it "a Sleeping Beauty of a castle."

So how was the party?

The day before yesterday we went to our neighbor M's 90th birthday party. She has seven children and innumerable grandchildren, as well as many friends and acquaintances. She grew up in the village of Noyers-sur-Cher, just across the Cher river from Saint-Aignan. She married a man from Blois who was in the wine business and they lived up there in a house he had inherited from his parents. Then in the 1960s they bought a little house in the country just outside Saint-Aignan to use as a summer place.

They used to spend the out here in the country, but a few years ago M.'s husband passed away at the age of 94 after a fairly long illness and decline. We now see M. and her children less than we used to. She doesn't drive and never has. When we came to live here in 2003, we had bought the house across the street from theirs and met them as soon as we got here in June, before we were completely moved in. They knew about us because they were close friends of the woman who sold us this house we still live in, so they immediately invited us over for a glass of wine. I think they were happy that their new neighbors spoke French and were interested in getting to know them.

There were about 100 people in attendance in at the recent birthday celebration, which was an outdoor event. The weather cooperated, and even though it was far from hot, it wasn't too chilly and we only had one afternoon rainshower, which didn't last more than five minutes. M's sons-in-law and grandsons had set up two huge tents (called barnums in French, after P.T.) with, under them, long tables and many chairs for guests. We went over there at noond and had a few glasses of wine and some finger foods for a couple hours. Many of M's children and grandchildren sought us out to say bonjour. We've known them since 2003, when some of them were still very young, and we've watched the granchildren grow up. Some of them have children of their own now.

Lunch was served at a about two o'clock. It was catered and the food had been delivered in a refrigerated trailer by the local Super U supermarket catering department. Wine flowed freely, including local sparkling wines and numerous bottles of local red wines. Conversation was loud and lively. I wish I had remembered to take my smart phone with me, and I thought above going back across the street and getting it, but finally decided I preferred to talk to people rather than take pictures of them. I've taken and posted pictures of similar events hosted by M. and her family over the past 20+ years. Tasha was invited to the party, and she was well behaved.

What was the food like? First there were several different big bowls of pasta, bean, and couscous salads with vinaigrette dressing and little cubes of cheese, mostly feta, and tomato in them. The salads were served with plenty of good French bread. Then the main course came out at about three o'clock. There were platters of cooked chicken drumsticks (cuisses de poulet) and thinly sliced rare roast beef (rosbif), also served cold (room temperature). The one hot dish was a big bowl of small, whole roasted potatoes that were really tender and lightly browned. They were excellent.

It was all pretty tasty, but not especially fancy; it was more like a picnic than a dinner. After the meat course, there was cheese: several good local goat cheeses, big wedge of brie, and a few Alpine (Swiss) cheeses, with more of the good bread. Then dessert, a platter of little rum-soaked cakes (cannelés, a Bordeaux speciality), and a little squares of a kind of pound cake, lightly frosted with a sugary white icing, and little cups of chocolate mousse. Wines were still flowing, white sparkling ones and nice reds from a couple of different local wineries. And then good expresso coffee to wake us all up.

By the time lunch was finished, it was about 5:30 p.m. People started to leave. One guest was the mayor of our village, with her husband. I hadn't seen them much this year, even though they are close neighbors of ours. The reason is that one of their daughters, who lives three hours from here near the Atlantic coast, has been in poor health for months now, and the mayor and her husband have been going there frequently and spending time with their daughter and her children. They also have a daughter and grandchildren who live in Southern California. It was nice to catch up with all their news and comings and goings. Both of them are just a year or two older than I am (late 70s).