Toulouse airport would not be my first choice of destinations to hang out on a Friday night.

Especially waiting for an Easyjet flight which has been predictably delayed until the small hours of Saturday morning.

This week has not been a week that will hold fond memories.

Whilst my parents were on holiday in France, my mum fell over a fairly innocent-looking step resulting in five broken ribs, a punctured lung and a protracted stay in a French intensive care unit.

A somewhat dramatic way to extend a holiday and certainly a crash course in French medical terminology.

Being the eldest of five siblings, and with an uncanny knack of reverting to the family roles that we all played as teenagers, I was assigned the task of getting us all out to the small French town.

We’re a family who stick together in a crisis. There’s a need for us all to be part of it and so, after a 4am start, we arrived in Toulouse like a veritable Essex army.

Spending an hour squeezed into a car designed for a small family of four, without a map, any directions, and with a combined French vocabulary which really doesn’t extend past ordering a ham sandwich and an Orangina, the journey was bound to be fraught. As designated driver, my sister’s instructions to follow the “peage” signs [the French word for toll plaza] which she insisted would lead us to the beach were particularly unhelpful though did at least manage to provide some humour. At the point we realised that an extended family holiday was not probably going to be something we would ever aspire to, the hospital appeared like an oasis in the desert.

If there has ever been a time I have been glad to be part of the EU, it was then.

Whatever anyone may think about the French, I have rarely felt so grateful to an entire country.

Seeing one of the people I love most in the world, looking frail and vunerable and hooked up to just about as much medical paraphenalia as I’ve ever seen in one place is scary.

The fact that she was in an airy private room, with two dedicated nurses who were relaxed,calm and reassuring at least helped to allay some anxiety.

Something we weren’t prepared for was the hallucinogenic effects of morphine.

Mum took some convincing that there wasn’t a forest outside the window and that there wasn’t a party going on in the next room.

Whilst in months to come we may laugh about it, the reality is, it’s a daunting process to watch, that gave us all a new understanding of what it must be like to care for someone with dementia.

In my family, my mum is the mortar that keeps us all together and at least for a few hours, without her, it looked like we were all starting to fall apart.

We may think we have an unrivalled health service, but from what I experienced in France, they can give us a run for our money.

I wonder how many people working in the NHS could speak such fluent French, I for one couldn’t and I’m fairly sure that our attempts at the familiar method of speaking the English word with a French accent provided much hilarity for the staff.

I honestly nearly died of embarrassment as my parents proudly told the consultant that I am a dentist, inferring a degree of medical knowledge that I’m not sure I have.

With the immediate crisis resolved and a mum that is hopefully very much on the mend, we’re tentatively planning the next stage; how to get her home after medial instructions to avoid flying for the next year.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt already from this experience is never take anything for granted.

When the proverbial hits the fan, the people that matter the most to you are all that matters.

Because of my sincere gratitude to the French, I am willing on this occasion to overlook the delayed flight and the distinct lack of signposting back to Toulouse airport. I won’t relax until my mum is back at home but until then I know she's in safe hands with the brilliant French medics.

Any French with dental emergencies... I owe you one for my gratitude. Vive la France.

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