In which we deal with things medical

It's been a rather dull yet stressful week thus far. On Tuesday, Blaise decided that he had not yet fully recovered from what was bothering him last week, or perhaps that something else was going on. Since he's under a lot of stress with dealing with tenure and all that good stuff, he's been obsessing about what could be causing his symptoms, and noticing each and every twinge. In the hopes of giving him some peace of mind, we headed off to the doctor on Tuesday morning, first contacting some of the people he knew in the hopes of finding a doctor who spoke more English than did the one last week.

Fortunately, the doctor who was recommended to us spoke relatively good English, so there were no concerns that perhaps key issues were being lost in translation. Also, the acuteness of the situation had changed, and so it seemed clear to us (as well as to the doctor) that the solution did not lie in antibiotics. Unfortunately, that meant testing to see what was going on, which, of course, costs money.

Now, here is the complicating factor. We're covered under the French healthcare system. But in order to prove that we're covered, we have to have this lovely piece of ID called a Carte Vitale. Which we don't have yet, because I was under the impression that we couldn't actually get it until after we had our Carte de Séjour which we can't get until after we have our Visite Médicale. My understanding, and Blaise's, is that we will get reimbursed by the healthcare system once we can get our Carte Vitale, but that until then, we may need to pay out of pocket.

At this point, we're hoping that perhaps we can use the receipts for our Carte de Séjour to enable us to at least begin the paperwork for the Carte Vitale, but we still need copies of our rent receipts for the last 3 months. (Evidently this is to prove our residency in France.) Since our rent payments have been directly deposited into our landlady's bank account, we don't have any proof of payment. So now I'm waiting to hear back from our landlady, in the hopes that we will be able to begin the Carte Vitale process tomorrow, or perhaps even this afternoon.