The wonderful Christine, who was the best of the wonderful carers that Fran had in her last year or so, has been ill with cancer twice in the past year and the latest hospital stay ended with her transfer to a recovery home not far from here.
I visited for the first time on Saturday and she has a lovely single room over looking a forested slope with a small balcony with regular bird visitors. But she was informed that her mutuelle did not cover the cost of that and she would have to move into a double soon or pay the difference. I gasped when she told me the cost, €70 a day. . And another fiver if she wanted the telly.
Fortunately, in addition to both French and UK pensions she is on sick pay from work so has decided to pay it. Not sure how you get sick pay in retirement but there it is.
I am visiting again this afternoon and, as it is my shopping day, taking in supplies that she has requested. The nearest thing to custard I have found in France, Bridelice, and she has requested ginger biscuits and ginger or lemon teabags. The custard I am confident about because I need some myself, but not sure about the other stuff. I will do my best.
You can get them both at Inter, ginger and lemon teabags either with the tea or with the bio things and ginger biscuits should be in the exotic foreign aisle. I’m assuming the bridelice is the tetrapak creme anglaise in the uht milk aisle?
€70 is rather good value I think. And similar to the cost of a very modest local authority EHPAD room.
My sister pays £8000 a month for a dementia care home for her husband in the UK. (And no she couldn’t look after him at home as no home care like here, he gets aggressive and weighed 20 stone so she had to call out fire brigade for his frequent falls.)
It is very good. 1:1 staff ratio and he thinks he’s in a hotel on holiday (and even has a holiday romance going with another patient who thinks she’s French, despite only being able to say La la la )
Well I got the custard and lemon tea bags but even though there were hundreds of biscuits over about 5 or 6 metres, couldn’t find any ginger but a member of staff told a friend that they would be in tomorrow. We’ll see.
@vero there isn’t a foreign aisle at this Super U and indeed it seems to have disappeared from the larger one at Nontron where I used to buy Bird’s, so I am pleased about this stuff being available. Anyway I’ll be taking her 2 packets plus the tea this afternoon and we’ll see if I have ginger biscuits for the next time.
Thank you @ChrisMann I’ll pass it on to her shortly.
@JaneJones I knew that care homes were very expensive I was just taken aback at the cost of a single room in addition to a double. Also I don’t know what the basic stay is because that is being paid by her mutuelle. Anyway she is hoping to be back at home within a month, and obviously well supported by all her former colleagues in the excellent French way which I know well.
Another friend is in another home for the same reason as your sister’s husband, the pompiers kept coming out to put him back in his chair.
Mum’s was around £1100/WEEK unto when she died in 2024, that was a UK care home and the money from the COMPULSORY forced sale of our family home after dad died in 2017, by the local authorities only lasted a couple of years at that rate so she went back on being a social case and her pension taken against costs. As I mentioned before, be aware family homes can be forced to be sold if the owner is in council supported care homes and the other spouse already deceased meaning nothing left for family to inherit.
Christine was sitting up in bed doing fine though she had had a bit of a ‘turn’ before I arrived and while I was there the doctor who had been called looked in just to check on her. After that we had a good catchup but I am well versed in the signs of her getting tired so took my leave around 4.30.
Back to the car I got Jules out for a walk around the site which is silent deep in the woods and at the farthest point we were able to go down towards her window so she could vigorously wave goodbye.
She remains cheerful despite being on her 3rd or 4th adventure in cancer, this one was a migration from her ovaries to her bowel. 20 years ago it was breast cancer but the latest caused an occlusion which is a blockage of the bowel. When I was in hospital because of my heart last May she was in another recovery home nearby and we would text each other. She got home from there and the day she arrived her husband, a rock star who was also a dear friend of mine, fell in the street, cracked his skull and fell into a coma from which he died a couple of hours later. I got the news by text while in hospital and the nurses in the room were shocked at my shock and thought I had suffered some sort of relapse.
Oh dear, got a bit carried away there but with all she did for Fran I could not imagine how I could repay her in her hour of tragedy. Her only reply to that was ‘you owe me nothing, we all loved Fran.’
Needless to say she can have all the ginger biscuits I can muster from somewhere.
Home care for dementia patients is a total postcode lottery in the UK. My sister-in-law is bedridden with severe dementia, but fortunately for my brother they live in Northamptonshire so they receive visits from two home carers four times a day 7/7. My brother is 83, so that could be part of the reason for the high level of home care provided for his wife.
I’m very glad I am able to be a live-in carer for my mother (aged 100) but she is not at the dementia stage yet fortunately, though obviously not quite as sharp as she used to be.
I am hoping she will be able to live here until she dies instead of going into a care home, not just from the cost point of view, although the money is there for that if needed thankfully, but because of the familiarity of the surroundings and because she is very deaf so would really struggle with understanding care home staff - she can’t always catch what I am saying to her one to one these days, sadly. She has turbo-level hearing aids.
I am anticipating we will need to get somebody to come in morning and evening to help her get dressed and undressed at some point, but we’re not quite there yet.
My local SuperU has real Ginger Nuts. Will happily post you some if you don’t find a solution. My OH found some Birds Custard in a Chinese Supermarket in Antwerp! It was also spotted in a French supermarket by the wonderful Tatty Macleod but in a very strange location - watch this
Fantastic Chinese supermarkets in Antwerp! Sun Wah is the one I used to go to. Birds custard is very handy for custard bao and custard mooncakes. I still use the extremely heavy granite pestle and mortar I got there over 35 years ago.
€2.09 for a packet of ginger/citron biscuits, made in France, arriving tomorrow from Amazon fr. I will deliver them in the afternoon and we will see if she likes them.
If she does I can make a regular order, if she doesn’t, tant pis, I’m sure I can finish them.
. And another fiver if she wanted the telly. 
