There Can Still Be a First For Everything

Carolyn visits a French doctor

As I’ve hit middle-age (I am 51), I have decided that a lot of what older people are striving for when they drink, do drugs, or sleep with younger people is to recreate a “first time” feeling. At a certain point in your life you start to worry that you have seen and felt everything already (first love, first promotion, first bite of lobster dripping with butter, first viewing of Spinal Tap) and we miss the joy and wonder of experiencing things for the first time.

This is where travel comes in. I promise that as soon as you step outside of your country you will feel as if you are a vulnerable, stupid twenty-something who knows nothing about the world. All your life experience seems to fly out the window. This can be exhilarating, terrifying, hilarious, annoying, or all of the above.

We’ve been in France for nearly three months now. When it comes to our inevitable necessities, we’ve had to switch from “we’ll just wait until we’re back in the States,” to “my roots are showing and I will locate a French hairdresser ASAP.”

First on my necessities list was a French doctor. Nothing was wrong, but I have some regular medications I take and I needed a few refills. I used a Facebook page I frequent called Americans in Montpellier. I asked if anyone could recommend a doctor who spoke English, preferably a woman. I got three names!

Searching for them online, I quickly learned about DoctoLib, which is an app for finding doctors. Not only did it allow me to make an appointment, it told me who could speak English and who was accepting new patients. I scheduled an appointment for two weeks later, which didn’t seem bad after the stories I had heard about interminable waits.

I took the tram to the appointment which took about 20 minutes, door to door. When I arrived at the office, I was surprised to find a little waiting area with no people and no receptionist or receptionist area—just a room with around eight chairs. I was bang on time and I looked for a bell to ring or something and saw none. How did they know when patients had arrived? Was I on camera? Or do French people just always arrive exactly on time to appointments? (There was a caveat when I booked my consultation that if I missed my first appointment I would never be allowed to schedule another one with this doctor, which I find more threatening than a monetary charge.)

After around five minutes, a woman and her daughter joined me in the waiting room. We all said bonjour to one another. Roberto and I had read in a book that when you walk into a doctor’s waiting room in France you should say hello to everyone there, which is very bizarre. If I did that in a waiting room in America, I think some people might get up and leave.

Within seconds of the mother and daughter arriving the door opened and a man summoned them to the back. Hmmm. Was I in the right place? Had I not confirmed with someone or something? Maybe they are all huddled in a room laughing at the American who doesn’t know that she needs to arrive with croissants to be seen.

Fifteen minutes later a woman came and fetched me and took me to her office. She introduced herself as the doctor, so she had no nurse doing the intake/blood pressure/weighing thing. She did it all herself. I could not tell her my height in centimeters so she took my measurements.

This ruler on the wall had me wondering if I had accidentally booked a pediatrician, and maybe they had left me waiting because they were wondering when my child would arrive.

The doctor spoke English but she was not fluent, so we had some obstacles, and I used Google Translate a fair amount. I needed a refill of sumatriptan, which is for migraines. She said she would refer me to a neurologist. For my other prescriptions, she said she would refer me to other specialists, so in this way it works very much like an American HMO.

But here is where it got weird. She wanted me to come back to see her one time for each referral. She gave me the referral letter for the neurologist this time but said I needed to come back to see her again to get her OB/GYN referral and another time for a hematologist! At home a doctor would make all the referrals at once. This just seems like such a time suck for her and for me. To be fair, perhaps our language barrier made her feel the visit was going to run too long if she did everything in one day, but I suspect that the one visit/one referral thing is common.

Here was the most surreal moment. At the beginning of the visit the doctor has asked if I had a Carte Vitale and I said no, which meant I was not in the French health care system. I would be paying for the visit myself and not getting reimbursed by the government.

I assumed the visit would cost anywhere between $100-$10,000. I mean, I didn’t really think a quick consultation would cost $10,000, but as any American knows, one simple doctor’s visit could lead to a CT scan or an MRI that could suddenly cost thousands. At the end of this visit the doctor (apologetically) handed me a bill for €25. She ran my credit card on a machine by her desk (again, not handled by a receptionist), and that was it. Without insurance the whole visit was around 27 bucks. Mon dieu.

She asked me how much the visit would have been in the US, and I told her it might have been $40-$50 on the day but that was in addition to the maybe $2000 per month a couple would pay for insurance. She was startled but also told me she didn’t think the French system could last forever. She said she thought it was in danger of collapsing. So, uh, that would sure suck. Especially since the health care is a big reason we chose France. I will you keep updated as I learn more about this dire prediction.

In upcoming posts I will tell you about my first haircut, my first massage, and our first French drag show!

Jusqu’à la prochaine fois (until next time)

Carolyn & Roberto