Well, after five years of trying, we finally managed a white Christmas in France. There's been snow on the mountains each year but not in the actual city. So when it began snowing on Friday, we were hopeful. And we woke up to lots of snow on Christmas Day. We visited a medieval village, Pérouges, east of Lyon. It was charming, deserted and bitterly cold.
Afterwards we returned to traditional Christmas nosh, followed by three episodes of the American TV series '24'. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, no doubt due to an excess of bouche de Noël, for some reason I found myself remembering my one dietetic triumph in an otherwise undistinguished career.
I was doing a year's locum in a London teaching hospital at the time. One day I was summoned to speak with a doctor about a difficult dietetic case. The patient was a young woman who'd argued with her boyfriend, set fire to herself with paraffin, then changed her mind- but not before sustaining burns serious enough to require skin grafts. She needed to be fed by naso-gastric tube, and if this wasn't enough, she suffered from anorexia, and if this wasn't enough, she was vegan. Most commercial tube feeds contain animal products. It was my task to establish a good relationship with her, in the hope of persuading her to accept a tube feed which was nutritionally adequate.
Ms B was in her own room, a cubicle off a traditional ward. One thing I hadn't realised about burns patients is the horrendous smell caused by burnt flesh. On leaving her room after my first visit, I vomited. I continued to visit her and established a rapport. In time she agreed to abandon her vegan principles for the moment, and accept a tube feed which would give her the nourishment needed to allow the skin grafts to take. I saw her every day. Etched in my memory, is her comment one day. She told me that she'd looked down at her body and exclaimed 'I've got breasts'. These had shrunk with her anorexia. In due course, the surgeons performed skin grafts, they were successful and I received a pat on the back for my dietetic efforts. That year working in a London teaching hospital was hectic, with too high a workload but I loved it.
Nostalgically yours
Jane
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