Monday I predictably overslept again, I am going to have to figure out that radio alarm pronto. When I arrived at the Thermes I went straight to the place where my doctor administers the first part of my treatment – the Methode de Proetz. I have no idea who or what this de Proetz is or was, but will attempt to describe the method as best I can, in the hope of providing some valuable insights for those among my readers who are considering a Cure themselves.
The Methode de Proetz goes as follows. You lay down in a chair rather like a dentist’s, head bent backwards. The doctor puts a hose up one of your nostrils and pumps it full of water. Once the nostril is sufficiently irrigated, he puts a device up the nostril and ‘unplugs’ the opening between nostril and sinus. It feels like using a plunger to unblock a toilet, but whether that is actually what happens I don’t know. I am simply reporting my subjective experience here. The idea is that infected or blocked up sinuses can play an important role in asthma, and by ‘unplugging’ the sinus entrance the subsequent anti-asthma treatments gain easy access to the sinuses, rather than remain limited to the nasal area. Anyway, once a sinus has been ‘unplugged’ you must bend your head over a basin and snort strongly out, which may result in the emergence of slimy substances (I am trying to be delicate here). When one nostril/sinus is finished, the other receives the same treatment. You are now ready for the next procedure, which is called Irrigation Nasale and is exactly that.
This treatment takes place in a large room with lots of washbasins lining the walls. The fittings are silver plated and look ancient, probably going back to the beginnings of the spa at the turn of the previous century. You place yourself before one of these basins, and an assistant plugs a hose into one of your nostrils. The hose emits water which goes into one nostril and comes out of the other. However, since the Methode de Proetz has just opened your sinuses, the water takes a detour through them. This hurts like hell! After three minutes your other nostril takes its turn, and the pain moves to the other side of your face. Once this is completed, the painful part of the Cure is over.
You remain in the washbasin room and stick your face into a sort of inverted funnel; only your eyes remain uncovered. Through the other end of the funnel a fine warm spray of water is directed at your face, and you breathe this in deeply for fifteen minutes. Then you dry your face, thank the assistant, and move to the Vapour room.
In the Vapour room (that’s what I call it, no idea what the technical term is) you again stick your face into a funnel, and this time a vapour is emitted which you breathe in deeply for fifteen minutes.
Now you repair to a tiled room with special lights, which look rather like the ones used in restaurant kitchens to kill flying insects. You sit quietly for fifteen minutes and breathe deeply. The air in this room is laden with special particles which are good for your lungs – sorry to be so unscientific! Anyway these particles could do considerable damage if you read a book or newspaper while breathing them in – not sure why, my French isn’t up to understanding what the Matron told me when she confiscated my Harold Tribune last year. Anyway, it is a pretty boring experience, you just sit there quietly without having even some vapours or sprays to distract you.
But even these boring fifteen minutes end, and you skip to the central fountain where a charming Hebe dispenses the famous La Bourboule spa spring water in homeopathic dosages. I am allowed two inches in a tiny glass, which I sip appreciatively while looking at the various display cases.
Then I go home, exhausted from the pain and dribbling. Did I mention that there is a lot of snorting and dribbling involved?
So now you know what the Cure in La Bourboule is all about, for me, anyway. It is different for everyone, depending on their special requirements. For seventeen days of the outlined treatments I pay Euro 700 including doctor’s fees, but excluding room & board, which is not bad considering that it saves a year’s worth of asthma medication. Of course the asthma medication would have been paid for by the National Health Service whereas I pay for the Cure myself, but let’s not go there. The only thing that stays with me until the day I die is my body, so investing in it makes sense to me.
