Last mention of cholesterol ............... I hope

At our third attempt we got to see the doctor.

In France, although you can make a private appointment with the doctor, the form is that you go to one of his open sessions and sit in the waiting room until it's your turn. As you enter you say hello to everyone there and sit down carefully noting who is there already. Actually you pay more attention to the ones that come in after you because that's easier to notice. You then sit carefully ignoring each other. Well, being English we do, the french all chat and catch up. (It always seems to me to be daft to ask someone how they are in a doctor's waiting room, obviously they aren't well!) The doctor will appear from his room to show the current patient off the premises (no receptionist, all notes on computer, any paperwork/results you get given to take away with you) and kiss/shake hands with the next one - eyeing up who is also in the waiting room as he does so.

The first time we went the door was very firmly shut with a sign that (after a visit to the dictionary) said that deliveries were round the back.

Then we had visitors that precluded disappearing at breakfast time and tried again on Monday. The doctor had obviously been away for the whole week because as we walked up the path there were half a dozen men chatting in the sun outside and the waiting room was full. Tomorrow will be fine.

So yesterday we get there to a full waiting room and one man waiting outside but have come equipped with books - the magazines, apart from the ones I dropped off yesterday, date from 1994! Last time we came there was a radio playing quietly in the waiting room, today the doctor has decided to educate us while we wait and there was a screen showing us how we were going to die of smoking and then die of a heart attack - it was a long wait. And then how, amazingly, you could cook lovely meals even with no saturated fat! Astounding.

After studying the people waiting and who they were whispering to, we discovered that they were actually, like us, in couples. So the queue moved along quite rapidly. And no one was dying of a really snotty cold so if we caught something it was silent and deadly.

Doctor looked at our results and said 'it's better'. Took Him Outdoors' blood pressure which was fine. No risk factors, it's improving, keep going. We discussed walking which he agreed would be a good thing 3 or 4 kms not particularly fast would be good -right again dear daughter x - and have another blood test in 3 months. We all agreed that before Christmas would be better than after and off we went.