In which we visit the doctor

By the time we got home from the museums on Sunday, Blaise was feeling quite ill. He had been suffering from some gastro-intestinal issues (which I will leave to your imaginations) for several days which had gotten substantially worse. They didn't seem serious enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room (not to mention that I had no idea how we would go about that), but it did seem worth seeing a doctor about in the morning.

Monday morning, I began the process of trying to find a doctor who spoke some English. I began by calling the doctor's office in our apartment complex. No English. Next, the doctors' office up the road a bit. There may have been a doctor there who spoke English, but every time the receptionist tried to forward my call, I got cut off. (This business of getting cut off when a call is forwarded seems to happen to me an awfully lot in France.) The third call I made to a doctors' office near the center of the city. The receptionist assured me that the doctor spoke English, and suggested that we come in that morning.

Once I had showered and dressed, Blaise and I set off. Fortunately, we were able to leave the kids with my mom, so it was unnecessary to drag them with us. We found the doctor's office and added our name to the list at the desk. Then we went into the waiting room, and waited.

I think this is what was going on, though I'm not exactly sure. It appears that most general practice doctors in France split their hours into two parts. During one of those parts, they see patients who have made appointments. During the other part, you just show up, take a number, and wait for your turn. So the reason the receptionist suggested that we show up in the morning was because that was when the doctor had drop in care hours.

In any case, there were about 6 people ahead of us, and once they had all gone in, the doctor called us back. (No nurse, interestingly. Perhaps that's normal there, I don't know.) It turned out that he did not, in fact, speak much English, though he did speak some. Between my French, Blaise's French, and the doctor's English, we managed to muddle through somehow, and left with prescriptions for an antibiotic, an antidiarrheal (it's amazing what you need a prescription for here), extra strength tylenol (ditto), and Prilosec. We were also given strict instructions to go to the emergency room if Blaise got sicker, and to return on Wednesday if things hadn't improved substantially.

We paid our 22 euros (not bad for a doctor's visit) and headed for home. After lunch, I went to the pharmacy (which had been closed earlier) and spent three times that much filling the prescriptions.

Fortunately, after 2 days of antibiotics, antidiarrheals, and a severely limited diet, Blaise seems to be feeling quite a bit better, though he's beginning to be a bit cranky about subsisting on rice, pasta, and bananas.