1 more pompiers calendar sold I suspect 
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I dropped a 150Kg statue on my hand and mashed it up, I went to the local hospital who sent me off to the special hand unit in Orléans.
Unbenknown to me, an hour later my artisan neighbour’s apprenti sliced 3 fingers off. He went to the local hospital who sent him off to the special hand unit in Orléans.
Bizarrely the same evening the gendarmes came over to see if everything is ok in our road. 
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Fingers are overrated 
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Second hand shop?
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That’s off the cuff
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More like lack of hand shop
Orléans Hospital hand unit, the Monday morning I/we went was very busy with wannabee, predominantly male DIY-ers.
It’s amazing how many ways one bugger up a hand. It was a 150Kg Money Buddha that crushed me!
Is it ok now ?
The Buddha?
No……I meant moving from a French city (where I live) to a rural location where I am renovating my wifes French family house. Hence the accident.
With three kids who don’t stop going to doctors and the emergency it is a worry. Other than that….I would move tomorrow.
That is understandable, rural services are patchy.
I can’t say about everywhere but I expect it depends on the degree of rurality?
The area I live in has our village, is 5km from a large town and yet surrounded by fruit farms. One sheep farm. And an aerodrome. So, rural if you live outside the village.
Two MT in our village. A medical centre with all sorts in the town 3km away and yet more in the bigger town 5km away, where the lycee is. I do read about the dearth of rural doctors but seems not so bad down south. Yet.
Dentists, on the other hand….,
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Ah thats great when you have a good friendly community behind you . Unfortunately we lived for ten years in a very unfriendly part of France Near Lapalisse, where the neighbours and locals were extremely hostile all though there were about two people that lived a little distance from us that were always very good. I have now moved back to Brittany and a great village where the attitude and friendship is totally different
A little update.
Accident happened last Wednesday, drove home to the big city where I live very early Friday.
When I got back my hand started to swell. Went to the emergency at the city hospital (5 mins away from home)………got seen after about an hours wait……and then got booked for surgery the next day to have it opened and cleaned up.
So yeah, great service again….but……the small (very small) hospital in rural world who stiched me up did not do the best of job. It was always going to get infected in the way they handled it. It was immediate surgery job. But what they did was enough to get me home.
It was always going to end up in a city hospital sooner or later. But difficult from where I was working on my own.
I am glad your hand was fixed up and will soon be on the mend.
No one wants to have to experience A&E but it is good to know we are somewhere where treatment is available.
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That sounds frightening. Hope you recover well and quickly now.
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A different time and place (but very rural), many years ago I was up a mountain in Devon delivering a load of steel plates to a quarry. The idiot crane driver pulled the wrong lever, panicked, and sent a half ton plate heading my way. I leaped for my life but the heavy spare chains hanging from the hook hit my trailing hand as I pushed myself off.
A rapidly arriving ambulance delivered me to the local cottage hospital where they did all they could with the wound before sending me off to Exeter for the final operation. Excellent service in both places but the surgeons at Exeter said the swift action at the little place had saved my finger. 
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I have always been impressed by the French approach to infection control, and constant antiseptic swabbing with gallons of betadine. So shame it let a bacterium through.
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I haven’t told this story before, but our neighbour’s father had an accident cutting wood and was losing much blood. The pompiers came and also the on call SAMU.
He was taken by the pompiers to Macon with the doctor in their vehicle to carry out his treatment.
That was the quickest and best way to ensure that he got to Urgence in Macon as soon as possible.
Interesting comment. As an aside, I wonder whether the MRSA bug is as rife in french hospitals as it is elsewhere? I’ve just been in SA and heard several stories of people getting septicaemia post-op and not recovering.
Apparently not, but I can’t find the statistics to justify this right now.