Finale.
I shook my head from all this past reverie and put my mind to the job now in hand. We had the French attestation (paper confirmation) so went along to our local doctor in the next village. His office was situated on the Place de la République, over the railway line with its frightening red and white barriers permanently at half-mast, over the picturesque bridge shading the river Seye, and then left at the little lane by the expensively-lit pharmacie.
In the salle d’attente waiting room were seated three other people, all elderly. We entered, wishing them all a bonjour, as is the custom. We refrained from the usual ça va? (asking how they were) because clearly if they were all right, they wouldn’t have been there. We looked around for a receptionist, but evidently such an officious person, so beloved back home, wasn’t required here. We waited. Soon, the doctor breezed in, issued bonjours to us all, then welcomed the next in line into his surgery.
I tried to make polite conversation with the lady sitting on my right.
‘Monsieur le docteur, il est un bon docteur?’ (Is he a good doctor?)
‘Mais oui,’ (of course) shaking her head at such a stupid question.
I shut up and concentrated on translating the several posters pinned to the walls. As I was neither pregnant nor likely to be suffering from Aids, I didn’t bother attempting to read further. When the time eventually came for us to go in, I shook hands with the doctor and explained as best I could that I had come as translator for my husband. He nodded and ushered us into his surgery.
‘What has brought you to my surgery this morning?’ he enquired politely, whilst punching up some details on his PC.
‘Our Citroën C4!’ said H, quick as a flash.
Nothing wrong with his humour then.
The doctor looked puzzled, as well he might. However, we have hit upon a useful introductory phrase, which always seems to work. ‘J’ai mal au…….,’ (I've a pain here....) pointing to the offending part of the body. Soon the offending leg was being prodded, pummelled and the knee hit with a hammer. The doctor looked, then gravely pronounced:
‘C’est normal pour un homme de votre âge.’ (It's normal for a man of your age).
‘But, my other leg is just the same age, and that one doesn’t hurt.’
The doctor grunted several times, making copious notes into a file, before telling me that it was best if we sought a second opinion at the local Hôpital Chartreuse in yet another town, Villefranche de Rouergue.
‘Why do we need a second opinion, when we don’t know the first yet?’ said he logically.
‘Shh,’ said I resignedly.
The Hôpital Chartreuse proved clean, friendly and efficient. I had decided, whilst there, to take up the offer for me to have a mammogram. The French health service, rather like the NHS, invites all ladies over fifty to have a free test and as I had undergone this procedure several times in the UK I didn’t think it would be a problem. However, I had forgotten that tiny problem of language.
‘Please fill in this form,’ said the receptionist.
I glanced quickly at it, but was puzzled.
‘Why does it ask me for the name of my daughter? How did you know I had a daughter?’
‘I don’t understand, madame.’
‘See, here,’ said I pointing to the first line. ‘Nom de jeune fille…’ (young girl's name)
‘No,’ she explained resignedly. ‘We need you to put the name you had before you were married.’
I felt foolish. And the feeling persisted right into the consulting room. The nurse gabbled something quickly before leaving the room. Did she say I was supposed to undress? What if she didn’t say that and then I am led in my nakedness along a public corridor? Oh God, why ever did we come to a foreign country…?
But once I had at last finished with my radiology, and I was thankfully pronounced fit and well, we proceeded to the Physiology Department, where H’s treatment proceeded much better. The Korean doctor we saw there was charm personified. I explained as best I could H’s leg problem, furnishing the doctor with the usual difficult-to-read note from our own doctor. He got straight down to business, asking if the patient could lie down on the narrow, short (!) bed (all Frenchmen are short) whilst he did several tests on H’s nerves and muscles. At some point the doctor unravelled a long cable with a needle on the end. I thought I’d better say something.
‘Uh, mon mari n’aime pas les aiguilles.’ (My husband doesn't like needles). This translates medically as either ‘my husband has a low pain threshhold’ or more realistically ‘my husband is a coward.’ Either way, the doctor seemed to catch on straight away. He told me that as soon as he was about to puncture the patient’s foot with the long needle, I should divert his (not the doctor’s) attention. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do this, but waited for him to nod, before suddenly coughing. My cough was followed instantly by a howl of pain from the unfortunate patient.
Voilà!
The doctor said that in his professional opinion the difficulties with the leg stemmed from problems in the lower back and the fact that H wasn’t getting any younger. I translated. To which H replied: ‘it’s not younger I want to get, but older...!’
Anyway, the doctor pronounced that the problem with the leg was nothing too serious that could not be corrected by the purchase of a bicycle.
‘See,’ I told H, ‘it’s what I’ve always thought:
He says you’re to get on your bike!'
End.
Showing posts with label I told you I was ill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I told you I was ill. Show all posts
I told you I was ill!
Part 2.
Later on, the afternoon proved to us what we had always suspected: the French are a nation of form-fillers. Eventually, I was issued with un attestation from the Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie (CPAM) attesting to the fact that we were both now eligible for French medical benefits. It seemed that in practice, all French citizens pay up front for their medical costs and receive some back. The normal ratio is one hundred percent up front, and five days later, seventy percent of the cost is refunded directly to your French bank account. We still didn’t understand when we might receive our carte vitale, that all-important card that would give us credibility in our new country, but in the meantime I suppose the attestation will have to do. Mind you my inner neuroses were working non-stop. I could visualise that nightmare scenario of our lying in the road somewhere waiting for the ambulance to arrive, then groggily trying to explain to the trauma team just why we hadn’t a carte vitale but that we had got a vital piece of paper that was probably in my handbag somewhere!
Of course, if we hadn’t been residents and merely visiting the country, we could have applied for a CEAM card, which gives visitors the benefits of European-wide health insurance. But we had to come to terms with it. We were now bone-fide residents and must deal with the issues involved.
On the plus-side, it was clear that the standard of hospital treatment in France is second to none, and we were told there are virtually no waiting lists for operations or hospital beds. Apparently public and private medicine operate alongside one another with no difference in the standard of care between them. Everyone tells us that the quality of health care and facilities in France is among the best in the world, and much private treatment costs considerably less than back home. If ever we develop cataracts, for example, the cost of private treatment would be around nine hundred pounds sterling here, compared with three thousand pounds in the UK. Enough said.
However, our neighbour Franck told us that la France has long been a nation of hypochondriacs, famously satirised by Molière in Le Malade Imaginaire. He told us that he reckoned the French visit their doctors more often than most other Europeans and buy large quantities of medicines, health foods and vitamin pills. This must be why, in nearly every run-down dilapidated village we have driven through, the pharmacie looks the most modern, expensive building in the place.
H looked thoughtful. ‘The French must be hypochondriacs; I mean, everywhere I look are adverts for Piles.’
‘No!’ I told him horrified. ‘Those aren’t adverts for haemorrhoids; piles is the French word for batteries!’ I just knew that this foreign language thing would get us into trouble.
When Franck told us that the incidence of heart disease in France is among the lowest in the world because of the high consumption of red wine, my resident alcoholic’s face lit up. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?
We both wondered, though, why the NHS couldn’t operate in the same manner as the French health service. It seems obvious to everyone except the UK government that the increasing size of the population can no longer sustain a completely free health service. Some sort of charge needs to be levied on all wage-earners. We thought long and hard about the difficulties we had always experienced with English hospitals. The problem seems to lie not in the staff, who always appear surprisingly cheerful in the circumstances, but with the fabric of hospital buildings built in another time with a different set of values. No longer are staff in English hospitals prepared to scrub floors on their hands and knees, preferring modern polishing machines instead. Hospital clinicians seem conditioned to rely on modern antibiotics to kill germs absorbed internally by their patients, rather than the preventative, old-style carbolic administered liberally on floors and walls to disinfect the building rather than the patient. I just don’t know why the British put up with such a system. Closing all the old Victorian hospitals and building new, purpose-built buildings capable of maintaining high levels of surgical cleanliness would be a start. The hospitals everyone loves are not the bricks and mortar that hold them together, but the people who actually serve within them. These caring people will still be there in newer, cleaner and more hygienic surroundings. It is the very least staff should expect and what patients deserve, particularly in times of crisis. And if all this requires wage-earners to contribute more, then so be it. It would be worth it.
......to be continued next Sunday
Later on, the afternoon proved to us what we had always suspected: the French are a nation of form-fillers. Eventually, I was issued with un attestation from the Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie (CPAM) attesting to the fact that we were both now eligible for French medical benefits. It seemed that in practice, all French citizens pay up front for their medical costs and receive some back. The normal ratio is one hundred percent up front, and five days later, seventy percent of the cost is refunded directly to your French bank account. We still didn’t understand when we might receive our carte vitale, that all-important card that would give us credibility in our new country, but in the meantime I suppose the attestation will have to do. Mind you my inner neuroses were working non-stop. I could visualise that nightmare scenario of our lying in the road somewhere waiting for the ambulance to arrive, then groggily trying to explain to the trauma team just why we hadn’t a carte vitale but that we had got a vital piece of paper that was probably in my handbag somewhere!
Of course, if we hadn’t been residents and merely visiting the country, we could have applied for a CEAM card, which gives visitors the benefits of European-wide health insurance. But we had to come to terms with it. We were now bone-fide residents and must deal with the issues involved.
On the plus-side, it was clear that the standard of hospital treatment in France is second to none, and we were told there are virtually no waiting lists for operations or hospital beds. Apparently public and private medicine operate alongside one another with no difference in the standard of care between them. Everyone tells us that the quality of health care and facilities in France is among the best in the world, and much private treatment costs considerably less than back home. If ever we develop cataracts, for example, the cost of private treatment would be around nine hundred pounds sterling here, compared with three thousand pounds in the UK. Enough said.
However, our neighbour Franck told us that la France has long been a nation of hypochondriacs, famously satirised by Molière in Le Malade Imaginaire. He told us that he reckoned the French visit their doctors more often than most other Europeans and buy large quantities of medicines, health foods and vitamin pills. This must be why, in nearly every run-down dilapidated village we have driven through, the pharmacie looks the most modern, expensive building in the place.
H looked thoughtful. ‘The French must be hypochondriacs; I mean, everywhere I look are adverts for Piles.’
‘No!’ I told him horrified. ‘Those aren’t adverts for haemorrhoids; piles is the French word for batteries!’ I just knew that this foreign language thing would get us into trouble.
When Franck told us that the incidence of heart disease in France is among the lowest in the world because of the high consumption of red wine, my resident alcoholic’s face lit up. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?
We both wondered, though, why the NHS couldn’t operate in the same manner as the French health service. It seems obvious to everyone except the UK government that the increasing size of the population can no longer sustain a completely free health service. Some sort of charge needs to be levied on all wage-earners. We thought long and hard about the difficulties we had always experienced with English hospitals. The problem seems to lie not in the staff, who always appear surprisingly cheerful in the circumstances, but with the fabric of hospital buildings built in another time with a different set of values. No longer are staff in English hospitals prepared to scrub floors on their hands and knees, preferring modern polishing machines instead. Hospital clinicians seem conditioned to rely on modern antibiotics to kill germs absorbed internally by their patients, rather than the preventative, old-style carbolic administered liberally on floors and walls to disinfect the building rather than the patient. I just don’t know why the British put up with such a system. Closing all the old Victorian hospitals and building new, purpose-built buildings capable of maintaining high levels of surgical cleanliness would be a start. The hospitals everyone loves are not the bricks and mortar that hold them together, but the people who actually serve within them. These caring people will still be there in newer, cleaner and more hygienic surroundings. It is the very least staff should expect and what patients deserve, particularly in times of crisis. And if all this requires wage-earners to contribute more, then so be it. It would be worth it.
......to be continued next Sunday
I told you I was ill
Part 1.
For a happy marriage
The husband should be deaf
And the wife blind
Old Occitan proverb
It's Summer 06. Our ancient ventilator fan has been moved into the bedroom, ready and willing to crank into life when perspiration in the middle of the night reaches that point of no return.
He who never went to the doctor back home, when everything was free, has now decided he should get his left leg checked out. It must have been whilst wearing his new French shorts that I bought from the open air marché in nearby Caussade that brought him to this momentous decision. He has been limping for more years than I care to remember, resulting in one leg having become wasted and thinner than the other one. There’s nothing like exposing all that flesh to reveal life’s imperfections. My brother once said that everyone should be like him and not wear glasses, as he didn’t want to see everyone’s spots and pimples in all their red and gory detail. But there we were. The shorts definitely revealed H’s leg problem to one and all, so a solution needed to be found.
When we were originally contemplating moving to France – or rather when I had decided and H had reluctantly agreed – I had managed to persuade the medical people at the Centre for Non-Residents in Newcastle upon Tyne that I should be issued with their E106 form. This was no mean feat, as I was pushed from pillar to post trying to get through to the correct office.
Eventually I managed to persuade them that I had been paying full national insurance contributions for nearly thirty years and surely I was entitled to something? But, of course, because I was yet to reach the magical age when I would qualify for a full pension, all they could promise me was an E106 form.
‘But, what am I supposed to do with it?’ I asked, expecting a rude reply.
‘We will send you two copies of the E106. You need to take both forms to your local sickness insurance office. Do not fill in any part of the form yourself (on pain of death!). The foreign authority will then complete part B of both forms. They will send one copy to us to confirm registration and will keep a copy themselves. Once you have registered with the foreign authority, they will deal with any claim you make for help with medical costs. They can also tell you what you are entitled to.’
‘But, you told me that my E106 will run out in January 07 – that’s eleven months before I reach sixty. What will we do then?’
‘When your E106 certificate runs out, you must make enquiries with your local sickness insurance office about the possibility of joining their sickness scheme. Then, when you actually reach sixty, you can apply to us for our form E121.’
Another form, aargh!
I put the phone down, my head reeling. So that was all there was to it, then! We didn’t even know where our ‘local sickness insurance office’ was, let alone how to ask about all this in our halting French.
I decided that the most appropriate place to ask was our local friendly pharmacie, where the helpful owner spoke some English. He told us that the office we needed was in Montauban, the capital town of our region. We thanked him and studied the map. As with all the places we needed, it was situated more than fifty miles away. This was proving the case for everything.
Once I received the all-important forms from Newcastle, we filled up the car and prepared for a long haul. As usual on our journeys we took several wrong turns, screeched via hand-brake turns off many a private piece of farmland before we took the inevitable scenic route to Montauban. The traffic in the city reminded us of back home. Narrow roads, parked cars, no time to stop and look before receiving gesticulations and impatient horns. Before coming here I had led a very sheltered life, but have now learned phrases, arm movements and swear words that I would rather not repeat.
By now our watches showed the inevitable: eleven fifty-five. Too late. No wonder French restaurants do such a roaring trade every lunch-time. Everything shuts (except restaurants) for at least two hours every weekday, just when you manage to find the place you’re looking for. There was only one thing to do. We walked into a restaurant and ordered lunch.
Continued next Sunday..........
For a happy marriage
The husband should be deaf
And the wife blind
Old Occitan proverb
It's Summer 06. Our ancient ventilator fan has been moved into the bedroom, ready and willing to crank into life when perspiration in the middle of the night reaches that point of no return.
He who never went to the doctor back home, when everything was free, has now decided he should get his left leg checked out. It must have been whilst wearing his new French shorts that I bought from the open air marché in nearby Caussade that brought him to this momentous decision. He has been limping for more years than I care to remember, resulting in one leg having become wasted and thinner than the other one. There’s nothing like exposing all that flesh to reveal life’s imperfections. My brother once said that everyone should be like him and not wear glasses, as he didn’t want to see everyone’s spots and pimples in all their red and gory detail. But there we were. The shorts definitely revealed H’s leg problem to one and all, so a solution needed to be found.
When we were originally contemplating moving to France – or rather when I had decided and H had reluctantly agreed – I had managed to persuade the medical people at the Centre for Non-Residents in Newcastle upon Tyne that I should be issued with their E106 form. This was no mean feat, as I was pushed from pillar to post trying to get through to the correct office.
Eventually I managed to persuade them that I had been paying full national insurance contributions for nearly thirty years and surely I was entitled to something? But, of course, because I was yet to reach the magical age when I would qualify for a full pension, all they could promise me was an E106 form.
‘But, what am I supposed to do with it?’ I asked, expecting a rude reply.
‘We will send you two copies of the E106. You need to take both forms to your local sickness insurance office. Do not fill in any part of the form yourself (on pain of death!). The foreign authority will then complete part B of both forms. They will send one copy to us to confirm registration and will keep a copy themselves. Once you have registered with the foreign authority, they will deal with any claim you make for help with medical costs. They can also tell you what you are entitled to.’
‘But, you told me that my E106 will run out in January 07 – that’s eleven months before I reach sixty. What will we do then?’
‘When your E106 certificate runs out, you must make enquiries with your local sickness insurance office about the possibility of joining their sickness scheme. Then, when you actually reach sixty, you can apply to us for our form E121.’
Another form, aargh!
I put the phone down, my head reeling. So that was all there was to it, then! We didn’t even know where our ‘local sickness insurance office’ was, let alone how to ask about all this in our halting French.
I decided that the most appropriate place to ask was our local friendly pharmacie, where the helpful owner spoke some English. He told us that the office we needed was in Montauban, the capital town of our region. We thanked him and studied the map. As with all the places we needed, it was situated more than fifty miles away. This was proving the case for everything.
Once I received the all-important forms from Newcastle, we filled up the car and prepared for a long haul. As usual on our journeys we took several wrong turns, screeched via hand-brake turns off many a private piece of farmland before we took the inevitable scenic route to Montauban. The traffic in the city reminded us of back home. Narrow roads, parked cars, no time to stop and look before receiving gesticulations and impatient horns. Before coming here I had led a very sheltered life, but have now learned phrases, arm movements and swear words that I would rather not repeat.
By now our watches showed the inevitable: eleven fifty-five. Too late. No wonder French restaurants do such a roaring trade every lunch-time. Everything shuts (except restaurants) for at least two hours every weekday, just when you manage to find the place you’re looking for. There was only one thing to do. We walked into a restaurant and ordered lunch.
Continued next Sunday..........
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