Wilfred De’ath

On 26th January, in the Hôtel ibis Styles in Saumur, France, I was stricken in the middle of the night by a severe, gangrenous infection on the big toe of my left foot. It was as though a small, venomous creature had suddenly escaped from somewhere or other and come to bite me… Three hours later, I found myself in the emergency department of Saumur Hospital. The brutal surgeon who examined me said at once, ‘That foot’ll have to come off.’

Thanks a lot, pal. A&E consultants have a tendency towards brutality, I have noticed. This one was no exception but nothing to the one at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, who told me, after I broke my shoulder in a rather pathetic suicide attempt three years ago, that it was all my own fault. Doing a long day in A&E in Saumur, I negotiated with the bloodthirsty doctor to get the amputation down to my left big toe rather than my whole foot. He finally agreed.

However, even I know enough about medicine to realise that no surgeon will operate while there is still an infection. So it was decided to put me in intensive care. (I sneaked a look at my medical notes and they said I was in ‘ danger de mort’. Phew!)

It turns out that there was no room available in intensive care because my designated room had not been cleaned. The reason it had not been cleaned was that the cleaners were on strike. The reason the cleaners were on strike was that they had not been paid. So I was kept waiting on a stretcher on a trolley in the corridor for several hours. Shades of the NHS. Perhaps all this was intended to make me feel at home.

Finally, in the middle of the night, by which time I had been shedding blood and raw flesh for 24 hours, a very pleasant young man arrived to wheel me into intensive care. (The room had finally been cleaned.)

The doctors remained brutal and bloodthirsty, and intent on amputation, but at least they were reasonably intelligent. The head doctor even spoke English – of a sort. The nurses were pretty, but brusque and coquettish, and the food was excellent.

The double room that I shared with a voisin (neighbour) was a little shrine to electro-engineering. I surprised myself by mastering the complicated technology, quite quickly, although even the nurses had trouble with it. I was put through an enormous Siemens scanner, which is like lying on the slab in a cremation. You have to keep taking deep breaths to reassure yourself that you are still alive.

Next month, I will tell you about my various voisins who included peasants, Algerians and one extremely distinguished man, François, who was visited by a general and a bishop, both at the same time. His wife turned out to be an extremely charming and generous woman who felt sorry for me (‘ sans famille, sans amis’) and slipped me the Times and the New York Times, both of which are my standard reading in the UK, as well as a box of milk chocolate, which I was not supposed to eat. Gangrene is the result of neglecting diabetes; hence no sugar.

‘This has to be entre nous, our little secret,’ she told me. ‘Is there anything else you would like?’

‘Well, madame, there is, but I am not up to it at the moment. Some other time, perhaps.’

Luckily, her husband, François, in the bed next door, had no English.