Neige

It's absolutely beautiful here; beautiful but deadly. It snowed yesterday all day, about four inches in all and last night there was a deep frost so at present we are living on top of a ski jump or a toboggan run. We travelled here in our camper van, an extravagance bought in April when I retired and before we got the dreaded lung news. It seemed like a good idea to bring it as it's good and comfy for me and my fat leg, but it has been a disaster. First off we couldn't move off from where we had parked it on the first day as it was all mud and the wheels just span around; we then struggled to turn it round to park it going downhill whenever we took it out as our little hamlet doesn't have mod cons like mud free turning circles. We (I say "we", I in fact wouldn't drive it for a million pounds) bashed it into a wall and broke the light casing a couple of days ago which is merde as we may want to sell it to pay for the next lot of Rolle treatment.

So the ice adds another set of problems and today we were due to go off to see our French family, parents and brothers of Julie married to Sam, our eldest. S and J are visting too as it's Julie's eldest brother, Thibault's 30th. The family live about an hour away near Bergerac on a farm (see picture) that rears ducks and makes fois gras, confit de canard, magret etc etc; c'est un tres bonne marriage! As I don't know how to say cancer in French - or much else medical, I was looking forward to a day of escape and superb proper home-cooked French food.

There is no way can we get the camper van down and certainly not back up the slope in our hamlet and turn it round afterwards in ravishingly beautiful, shiny, crackly ice. But help is at hand and lovely Sam and Julie have just called and are going to brave the elements and fetch us and we will go to the ball and no doubt come back looking like a couple of pumpkins.

Money, money, money

My friend and old work colleague John, who is a health economist, commented on my post called French lessons about the differences between the French and UK health systems, pointing out that France spends 11.1% of gross domestic product on health, public and private and the UK spends only 8.something. I did try to reply to his comment but my computer wouldn't play ball so I thought I would start a bit of a discussion about it. Firstly I wondered if this included Over the Counter (OTC) medicines because the French spend une bombe in the Pharmacie. Apologies to my very belle fille, Julie, but they are a nation of hypochondriacs on the whole. Witness the family cold we all had a few weeks ago, Sam started it and reluctantly took a few paracetamols and sniffed up the nose spray I had been given in the German hospital. I got it and as I had just had major lung surgery and was half dead I did take some antibiotics and some decongestant medicine. Apparently when Julie got it she went off to the doctor or medecin and came back with armfuls of medication enough to stock her own Pharmacie. She got better quicker though.

Also I observe that the French have loads more doctors than we do but I have heard that they are paid much less. They certainly seem to have less managers and admin staff as do Germany in my limited experience. So it seems to me that they spend more and that more of it goes on actual patient care albeit lots on medicines we wouldn't always deem necessary. We on the other hand seem to spend millions on managers who we pay to keep patients' costs down and OK I know I spent years defending this on stage, screen and radio but I have had my "the emperor's got no clothes on" moment or my conversion on the road to the Dordogne and Dresden.

And with all of these admin staff we still keep people waiting for hours. Witness Jess and Danny waiting 2 and a half hours to get his dressing changed and also my fellow blogger and fellow sarcoma victim, Dot, who had to wait four hours for her bed to be made ready for her so she could start on her new chemo regime. They knew she was coming presumably! Both in France and in Germany even though I turned up unexpectedly to both hospitals, I got to my bed within 15 minutes.

So let the debate begin and John put me right on my, no doubt, ignorant rantings just like you used to.

The census

The census lady came the other day; she followed hard on the men from Darty delivering our new washing machine and earlier we had had the plumber checking on our temperamental heating. This makes for a very exciting day in Maumont, a tiny hamlet with 12 houses and nothing else apart from divine views, a few sheep, some splendid cows and, before Christmas at least, ducks.

Being counted makes us feel official, although the form is a bit complicated and all in French of course. Whenever I get things like this to fill in I feel like making them more interesting by adding a few juicy details or attempts at humour. As many of you readers don't know me that well it might help if I gave a few examples of what I might put if I could...

Title: Mrs but really I prefer not to use one, don't like Ms and was too lazy to ever be Dr or Prof. I am Mom or Nanny Jean when a title is really required.

Forename: Jean but have to change that to Jeanne in France otherwise they think I'm a chap. Also known as Jeanie to some, Fiddly tid shortened to Fid to my Dad when he was alive and, sorry, Silly fat f***er to my husband as a term of endearment.

Surname: Trainor but this is really my husband's name. I was Mackay but that was my Dad's name; my Mom's name was Jones but that was her Dad's name - you get my drift.

Sex: Yes please

Address: Birmingham, UK and Maumont, Hautefort, France. Birmingham - large tunnel back, just Victorian, three story house. Maumont - one down, two up stone Perigourdian cottage with barn, of indeterminate age but old.

Date of birth: 10 April 1949 - It was Easter Sunday, it was in hospital and I just count as being a bulge baby. I was an accident

Marital status: Married to Stewart for 41 years, nearly 42. I was 18, he was 24. We are Derby and Joan now but have had a few roller coaster rides over the last four decades. Always wobbled off together thankfully.

Dependents: Officially none but there has been Sam, now married to Julie and living in France, Dr Sam actually and he teaches at Lille University; Joe, IT expert extraordinaire lives in Amsterdam with Scoobie his dependent dog; Luke just married to Aleks with two teenage step-children, Hannah and Chelsea, he is training to be a drugs counsellor and he lives in Birmingham as does Jess, married to Tom with Harry aged 4 and Danny aged 1, she has just started working as a business manager for a domestic abuse service. We are hoping to become dependent on them one day.

Education: Started at 4 over the road from where we lived, got moved to another school at 8. I wasn't a neat writer so I didn't shine. Passed for grammar school at 11 but not the posh one, came about 20th in everything throughout my time there but then, due to what must have been a clerical mistake, got three Grade A A levels. Went to Birmingham university after I got married so missed all the social life and probably an awful lot of trouble. Did Medieval and Modern History and got a 2:1 and then went on to do a Post Grad in Medieval Society and Culture, passed the exams but then got pregnant before I finished the thesis so became a ma not a M.A.

Occupation: Retired thank goodness. In this order have been: sweet shop assistant;sexually abused office worker; urban studies research assistant; admin officer for RoSPA, Business Manager, Deputy Director and Acting Chief Executive for NHS Confederation, the CBI of the NHS; Partner, owner and Managing Director of my own company, Health Links, an events organiser for the health service. Was also Chair, (not Chairman- prefer to be a piece of furniture rather than a proxy male)of an NHS Trust and Vice-Chair of a PCT(Primary Care Trust).

Health: they never ask this but just in case: crap - cancer; prognosis - not sure I will see the 2012 Olympics

Politics: Don't ask this either, but very disappointed and let down Labour

Religion: None unless atheism counts

Ethnicity: White but really a sort of pinky beige, taupe maybe, certainly not the colour of my compression stocking. Brummy through and through with hint of Scottish about two generations ago.

That's it and hope I get to fill in the next one in five years time.

Only here for the beer

Apparently some chap in Canada has just been had up for professional misconduct for selling some dodgy alternative cancer treatments for 10,000 dollars a year (nice work if you can get it!) his company allegedly claimed that "it’s more therapeutic to drink cold beer than to do chemotherapy, radiation and surgery". Unfortunately I can't stand beer either cold or warm and would marginally prefer radiotherapy and surgery. I can't give an opinion about chemotherapy yet but I suppose beer doesn't make your hair fall out.

If however you base your therapeutic decisions on evidence as our doctors are always recommending if I think about my friends and family, the big beer drinkers are in fact mostly bald or at least thinning on top and none of them have cancer! My dad for example: bald from the age of 21 and lover of the strongest home brew on record, drank from 11 in the morning till 11 at night every day, died at 87 not of cancer; my brother thinning on top is following in the family beer swilling tradition, lovely cancer free blood. Of my sons the baldest is the biggest drinker and amongst our friends, sorry mates but Chris and Dick both have wide partings and both love a beer or several, no cancer there either.

I can of course think of beer lovers with lovely thick hair and you probably know a few with cancer but as one who has stood out alone amongst her nearest and dearest as a scorner of ale and a pouter at porter and as one who to date has kept her refulgent locks I am wondering if this has been my big mistake.

I will give the chemo a try the week after next but if it fails to impress maybe I will try the odd shandy and , of course, try not to cry in my beer!

French lessons again

Every night for the past five nights I have been crawling up the walls; this is not an attempt to bash down the cobwebs and those antique very thin ghostly spiders that inhabit old French stone houses, but it's the pain from my shoulder, or shoulder blade should I say that is metaphorically driving me up the wall. It started about four months ago with a strange deep itch and being even more fidgety in bed than I usually am when sitting up trying to read. It's nagged away since then and gradually got worse but then this week, sacre bleu it's like toothache, earache and labour pains all rolled up into one.

I had told my oncologist when it was just niggling but he shrugged it off, lucky him to be able to shrug! He says it's my lungs that matter which is a fair point but I'd rather have the full picture and anyway now it seems my shoulder blade is living up to its name, spearing me when I am trying to have a lovely chilled out time in front of my log fire.

So this morning we went unannounced, sans rendez-vous, to Dr Fraize in our nearest village, Hautefort. He gave us an appointment for 10, listened to the whole story, he knew the first chapter as it was he who had insisted I went to hospital right at the beginning when the UK docs were shrugging my groin off and doing bugger all about it. He examined my cote as they call it here and got immediately onto the blower to the hospital in Perigueux where they had discovered leio and pulled him out in his vein. He spoke to one of the senior oncology radiologist doctors and asked him to analyse the CT scan I happened to have with me - the German one- to see if anything was showing up on my shoulder blade, if not he was to x-ray me to see if the bones were all OK. I could go between 2 and 6 this afternoon; again with no rendez-vous. Off we went, it's a lovely ride, 40 minutes through ravishing countryside, to the MRI dept, I handed in my disc, we sat for ten minutes in which time three people came into have thier scans, each was taken immediately into the changing room and from there into the scan rooms, no waiting at all. After 10 minutes the Doctor came out and said he could see nothing on the scan, so I must have an x-ray, he took me upstairs handed me over immediately to a radiographer who snapped me three times and then took me and the x-rays back to the Doctor. After another 5 minutes he took us into a consultation room and said he could find nothing on the bone, no evidence of bone mets that is.

The whole thing took less than an hour, Ok I would have preferred an MRI scan and will ask for one in Birmingham while I am having the chemo, but given that I emerged out of the blue into the French system this morning and by this afternoon had been given pain killers that work, been seen by a specialist, looked at properly and had at least one nightmare scenario discounted, I think we can safely say that France has scored again!

The whole system seems so much more accessible and open-minded; it's better organised for sure. As I arrived home I had a call from Jess, she had taken Danny to have his dressing changed in Birmingham, she called me after waiting for two and a half hours with him in a waiting room full of other little kids and their families. She had complained and asked how many children were in front of Danny in the queue, no-one could tell her. Where are we going wrong!

Cold shoulder

Sorry readers my shoulder is giving me terrible gyp today and I can't type much. It's been niggling away for months now, I have mentioned it to the docs but they have done their usual taking no notice trick. I cannot help but worry that leio has settled in my muscle or nestled around a nerve so I shall keep nagging for a scan. I may even play my ace and go and see our French doctor who started the whole process of discovery 18 months ago and ask for an MRI here; they seem to be able to respond so much more quickly and for some reason I can't understand they only charge about 50euros per tunnel experience. At least I would know one way or the other and we would all know what challenges the chemo has to take on alongside the lung blobs; if any.

Truffling off

In one of my earliest postings I threatened to write a regular restaurant review from the perspective of a bon viveur with cancer; marking on ability to be distracted from said cancer; opportunity to pretend you are sticking to the anti-oxidant, no red meat, no dairy loads of fruit and veg diet; and the comfort of the seats for those of us with battered groins. Shoulder is feeling better today thanks to co-codomol so here we go with the first review

La Truffe, Sorges, Dordogne, France

There was a time in my youth when a thing called a truffle was the height of sophistication. You only had them at Christmas and my Mom's favourite were rum truffles. Generally they were a bit disappointing despite the poshness, covered in plastic looking chocolate dragees and tasting worryingly like cast iron buckets - and yes I have tasted a cast iron bucket thank you. This was the early sixties, when Delia was still just a waitress and when we only used olive oil on bits of cotton wool to stop earache - except it didn't - and thought that Vesta Chicken Curry was the pinnacle of exotic.

I am now all grown up and we have been transformed by said Delia and Rick and Nigel and even the dreaded Gordon. I know what to do with olive oil and how to make a proper curry; I also know that a truffle is a turdy looking thing that pigs root up in this region of France and other foreign parts. They do look a bit like Mom's rum truffles but whereas those were just about affordable for a special treat Mom's eyes would have watered (a miracle as her eyes were dried up by a drug cock-up in the
70s) at the price of the real McCoy.

All of this was milling around in my head yesterday when we visited one of our favourite restaurants in Perigord where we have our French maison secondaire, La Truffe in Sorges which claims alongside hundreds of other French petite villes to be the Truffle capital of France. It has a truffle museum and a weekly truffle market and not much else apart of course from La Truffe. La Truffe is a Logis de France with pretty standard bedrooms and a Michelin Bib Gourmand Restaurant. It sits on the busy N21 that goes from Limoges to Perigueux, the traffic whizzes by but some travellers stop at midi to eat the four course 10.50 euro Menu de Jour. This means two things: the place is usually pretty full and it is open in the dead months of January and February. The locals around here go into semi-hibernation at this time of year, they cocoon themselves behind their shutters and all but a few of the restaurants and cafes are closed and miserable looking.

The restaurant is nicely done, they had a refurb a year or so ago and the 80s yellow and blue decor was replaced by more subtle greys and browns; the linen is good and thick, the chairs are wide and well padded, thank you says my groin and the pictures and artifacts are a step above the usual brocante finds and paint by numbers art that adorn many of the local hostelries. The Maitre D was in fact a Maitresse and had a cheeky wink and knowing look.

Alongside the Guillaume pas des amis (Billy no-mates) office workers and travelling salespeople having their 10.50 cafe compris lunch, and very nice it looked too, there are always plenty of tables filled with those who have made a detour in order to get the full La Truffe experience, including on a fairly regular basis, us. Outside the 10.50 midi menu the menus range from 18 right up to 100 euros. The latter is for the full truffle menu where every course is truffle based. I have never seen anyone having it so can't say if the dessert resembles Mom's favourite chocs in any way. We opted for the 44 euros for 5 courses menu. This was partly because it offered non-red meat stuff I fancied and partly because all of our worries about living on a pension go out of the fenetre as soon as we set foot in the place. We deserve to treat ourselves says Stewart and he is right.

So we had good ant-oxidant pumpkin soup to start and I followed that with a dish of perfectly cooked scallops topped with the signature truffles. There were five of these placed nicely around loads of free radical chasing salad leaves and hey ho five spears of cancer busting asparagus. There was a slice of potato under each scallop which I could have done without but then realised these went very nicely with the dressing which had still more truffles shaved into it. Stewart went for the truffle omelette and voted it excellent, the French don't seem to have caught onto our knack of producing pale looking eggs and whisking them into dry leathery concoctions, we have been asked in little french bistros how we would like our omelettes cooked, very soft and runny inside or just soft and runny. This one was perfection, golden in colour with little specks of truffle and oozing delicious eggy juices.

Because we had splashed out we then had a lovely little sorbet swimming in something very boozy to clean our palate and with our nice clean mouths we fell upon our next course. Mine looked anything but regulation sick person's fare but it was duck breast so although it looked quite red, I like it rare, it didn't have fur and wasn't a mammal. Neither was the fried fois gras, crisp on the outside and meltingly soft on the inside, that sat atop the juicy duck, mamallian more ambrosian I would say. The sauce had more truffles - hope they have cancer chasing qualities - and the only other adornment was a layered potato cake which was a little over-cooked if I am being brutally restaurant reviewish. It was all rich and robust and wonderful for a beef deprived, cancer riddled foodie.

Stewart had a big juicy veal steak (apologies here to all veggies that is veal and fois gras mentioned in one review; you can stop reading now if it helps)that his knife went through as if it were butter swimming in morel sauce and with lovely buttery tagliatelle. We scoffed it all down and wiped our plates clean with the proper french bread and we would have picked said plates up and licked them if we had been back in Brum in the 60s.

They offered us cheese and oh how hard it was to say no, the trolley was full of wonders; when we had been here in the summer with our friends Celia and Richard from California (well Richard is from Wales but they live in California) Celia had asked to have a bit of every one and they were delighted to give it to her. But we said no and felt very superior, well sick really but you have to put a good face on things.

That did mean we had plenty of room for pud and I had chosen a fruity one, lovely caremelised clementines with some orangey stuff and a clementine stuffed with clementine sorbet. Oh my darling, oh my darling it was lovely. Stewart's nutty macaroon stuffed with coffee cream and ice cream accompanied by a chocolatey thing in a glass was another success. We had washed all of this down with only a half bottle of Pechermant, the local red, but I had the lion's share because it is good for me and because I wasn't doing the driving.

We finished off with a kill all cancers cup of green tea and left after all the workers and the lunchtime lovers, pensioners we, busy doing nothing.

So my marks out of 10

Comfortable seats - 9 (ten would have given me a footstool and a cushion for my dodgy shoulder)

Anti-oxidant opportunities - 8 and we had to pay the price

Distraction from cancer thoughts - 7 but this is hardly fair as my shoulder was hurting and kept the creeping leio in mind

Cost 120 euros all in and we will have to go for the 10.50 blow out next time to make up for it