Week 20: Pulling a sickie

Today, I should have been cooking a Genoise cake, making my own noodles and filleting trout to cook in red wine.
Instead, I spent it being poorly. Properly ‘You should really go to hospital’ poorly.
Back in 1997 when we were first looking for a house to buy in the South of France, I fell very ill one night in the B&B where we regularly stayed.
It started out as a flu-like symptoms with my right leg swelling up, then developed into a frightening bout of the shakes as I heated up and cooled down in turn with a temperature a couple of degrees above normal. That night I woke up and tried to go to the bathroom for a glass of water and found I couldn’t stand up. I got out of bed and immediately fell to the floor, and simply couldn’t get up again – I was unable to work out which way was ‘down’ to push against the floor to pick myself up. Very frightening.
We called a doctor and he couldn’t find anything wrong, but did rule out having been bitten by something. The day before we’d been house-hunting in the Camargue and I feared I’d been bitten by a mosquito and had contracted malaria. Malarial mosquitos, said the doctor, are a few thousand miles away in Africa – has this man never heard of A Mighty Wind blowing them across the Mediterranean? And what about those little red spiders that are supposed to live in the vines around here? They’re poisonous, everyone who knows nothing says so.
After a day or two the fever went away and I was fine until the symptoms came up again a couple of years later, again without a doctor being able to diagnose the problem despite me undergoing various tests. And then I got another bout of the mystery illness about once a year, so when the problem came up this weekend I rushed round to the doctor immediately. I’ve come to recognise the symptoms early now, particularly the swelling of my right leg, so she was able to order a blood test while the problem was in full flow.
I have, it turns out, an ‘erisipel’, a blood infection. I have – have always had, since my early childhood – athlete’s foot which comes and goes and I control with topical creams to kill the ‘champignons’, the ‘mushrooms’ as the French so delightfully call the fungi. Every now and then they get into my bloodstream via a cut or break in the skin on my foot and infect my whole body – my leg swells up as it’s nearest the site of infection.
My doctor says the best thing is to go to hospital immediately since this is a very serious problem and I could die if I don’t get it sorted out. Ha! Has she never heard of the Cook’s Code of Conduct? Rule 1: Always Go To Work, No Matter What. Rule 2: See rule 1.
The restaurant is officially closed at the moment, but I’m working with the Chef on a few passing groups and our resident group of Gendarmes (groups of CRS Gendarmes, the French riot police, are regularly stationed away from home all over the country and we have a permanent group staying in the hotel). So as it’s just me and him there’s no question of me leaving him to work alone so I tell her to find another solution.
Hmm. Well, you could take this, and this, and this and use this cream and this special soap and lie in bed at home and a nurse will come round and give you twice-daily injections in the stomach to try to stem the infection, she says. Eight prescriptions? I must be poorly. In France, others judge your real level of illness by how many items you’re prescribed – one or two and you’re clearly faking it. Three or four and yes, well, OK, you might be a bit sick but it’s not serious. Five or six items and you’re definitely poorly, take the day off. Eight items, plus a nurse coming round morning and evening to give you an injection? Now you’re definitely sick, lie down straight away.
So I go with this option, except the only nurse I can find in the yellow pages who will take me on doesn’t do home visits so far away from home (she’s a five minute walk from my flat) so I have to schlepp round there twice a day. Me, who’s supposedly so ill I should be on a drip in hospital.
Anyway. So I do that and continue going in to work too, collapsing in bed as soon as I get home. Delphine is working at the moment but, sterling trooper that she is, manages to drive me to and from work most days and I get the bus the rest of the time rather than taking my bike – I’m really not up to cycling the five kilometres to the restaurant.
And the Cook’s Code of Conduct, she rules sternly, doesn’t apply to school and I get to spend the whole day in bed. I do go in to work in the evening, but it’s only for a couple of hours so it’s almost a complete day of rest.