Indeed. My op to excise a skin cancer carcinoma was done at CHU, Caen. That’s <1 hr. I had medical taxis to and from for the op and several check-ups. One ride home to Vire was in a reguar taxi with a meter, as all medic taxis were busy. The meter read €136.XX when I was dropped off.
I was the only pax. I would gladly have waited until another patient or two joined me.
I didn’t have need of more than b.p. and lipids monitoring in UK so nothing to make comparisons but I’d be pleasantly surprised to hear that in UK a nurse would come to my home every day for 3 months [except Christmas Day] to change my dressing.
One wintery day Nathalie turned up in crampons!
Ah yes! Valencia! A supermarket within 200m. One of the finest indoor markets in Europe 10 mins. A 20 min walk across the 17th/18th/19C centre of this wonderful city to the clinic or the dentist … all on the flat.
Here, the hospital is also a 1km walk but every step from my home is what to me would be punishingly steep uphill.
It is now, but budgets under huge strain so in some areas it is already not as good. And the future is uncertain so one cannot guarantee that level of home care in the future. So need to consider access to services carefully.
That is something else that may change to have more stringent conditions. Already they are refusing to provide a bon de transport for consultations, and only for in patient stays.
Probably exactly what we’ve been doing - just wanted others’ perspectives.
Actually, this is almost exactly our method.
Yep, I think that that’s probably what will end up happening. After finding all of the ones that meet our criteria, maybe we just go with the house at that point.
With FR’s debt running at 116%+ GDP something’s got to give. Cutting two bank hols and the other token suggestion isn’t going to touch it. And yet M. Melenchon insists that retirement age should be put back to 60!
Until they address the pension issue, they have a big problem. The French are welded to their expected pension age and I don’t think politicians have managed to explain the financial issues.
When we first moved out of Paris/London we went for a house and garden that charmed us. We knew it wasn’t a sensible idea but having lived in small places all our lives we wanted the experience of space. And we have loved living here for about 20 years.
Now, 20 years older, we are moving and the absolute priority is the town. The house we are buying is nowhere near a house of our dreams. And we weep slightly when we contemplate what we are leaving for this ugly duckling house.
But it will be a lovely swan eventually! House, especially old stone houses, can be fixed. Towns can’t.
We already went through that bit. 5 acres on a lake in FL. A house I had custom built from plans by a disciple of Wright. But, I couldn’t keep fighting the jungle outside…it just kept growing. Christ, it’s 30C now there still. This is muchmore sensible…
Also Florida has those tedious things called hurricanes.
I did briefly toy with the idea of going back to Turks & Caicos when I retire (no need for heating, or even aircon if you choose the right house that catches the breeze), but you have to be able to invest $300,000 in a property on one of the smaller islands to qualify for a visa, or $1,000,000 on Provo.
Another thing which we copied from some older friends: we considered it an advantage to be able to live on the ground floor: reception rooms, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom not needing the use of stairs.
Mind you, we have steps up to the house, albeit quite shallow ones.
I would definitely recommend you considering (if you’re not already settled on your location) looking along the Loire. But I’m biassed (and we are 20km South of the Loire).
We thought about stairs too, but decided that stair lifts aren’t that expensive (at least in the UK) and that it would be cheaper to install those than move.
I alternate daily between between 20 minute weights, stretches and yoga sessions and fifty minute ones, with lots of emphasis on the knees. Hopefully this combined with two or three 10 Km plus walks a week and continuous up and down stairs in a three storey house will continue to obviate the need for a stair lift
However there are now some affordable actual lifts that take up no more space than a cupboard. A friend of mine who (despite all efforts) found herself incapacitated had one installed. Big enough to wheel her wheelchair in (and out the other side) and she was able to stay in her house and maintain independence.
True , and I’ve left a corner clear on all three floors for such an eventuality, would only need to re-position one air to air heat pump.
There’ s a house down river from us that has a very steeply sloping front garden with a cross between a funicular railway and a sedan chair that travels between the front gate and the front door.
Our utterly unscientific approach (to buying a holiday home) was to go 4 times, over 2-3 years to the same gite. We fell in love with both the area, and exact location, then spotted that the empty house opposite the gite was for sale..That’s where we now live full time.
One issue we hadn’t anticipated in the countryside was the difficulty in finding any group medical practice (no individual doctors seem to exist) that would accept my wife (I don’t have a doctor at all). These group practices seemingly keep redrawing (ie narrowing) the boundaries of where they will accept patients from, and we have to keep looking for new group practices, ever further away, that might be persuaded to accept patients.
Just remembered another criteria… Zones inondables.
We ruled out a nice house because it was in a flood zone. I’ve seen too many reports on the news where people’s belongings have been ruined by floodwater.
