Some people call it Murphy’s Law.
‘Round here, it must be called François’ Law, or something similarly French. Not only do things break – a topic we’ve gone over countless times in this blog – but they break with a perfectly imperfect sense of timing.
Earlier this year it was the air-conditioning, giving up its ghost one Friday afternoon in mid-August (the steamy month during which no one works in France), precisely while we entertained a houseful of guests.
Then it was a leak in the roof that managed to flood our family’s empty suitcases – just as we were ready to pack them.
Now it is a guest that has broken. And while this particular story doesn’t yield any insights to the fragility of French construction, it does provide quite a nifty glimpse into the area’s emergency medical services.
French medicine was an obvious topic around Bellevue last week. Among our roster of visitors was Petra, a Finnish pediatric nurse who was four months’ pregnant; Pierre’s brother Jean, a retired, Quebecois surgeon who proclaims the benefits of garlic and all things organic; and Jean’s wife Ginette, a practicing nurse in Quebec.
And who doesn’t have medical stories to tell? Mingling with the real medics’ words were my American mother’s anecdotes of the US’s much-debated health care system; views of Britain’s National Health Service from Michael, Petra’s English husband; and lessons learned from Pierre and my current navigation of France’s relatively paternal scheme.
It’s hardly surprising that medicine made for, er, healthy conversation.
All these folks – bar my American mother – maneuvered rather social medical regimes. Putting some numbers on our represented countries, the World Health Organization’s most recent comparisons show that general government expenditure represented somewhere between 70 and 80% of total expenditure on health during 2005 in Canada, Finland and France. In the UK the figure was as high as 87%. The US Government’s share in its citizens’ health care that year? 45%.
It is the stuff that spurs conversation.
One lunchtime, for example, our northern congress of the UN discussed pharmacies. OTC drugs are for the grabbing in the US at Walgreens and in grocery store aisles. The Canadians have Shoppers Drug Mart. The Brits have Boots.
In France, even to purchase a simple packet of throat lozenges, I must visit a pharmacy that’s designated by the appropriate big, green, first aid cross. There are no shopping carts available in these French pharmacies. There is, in fact, hardly any room for carts in these little shops that seem to scream at their customers, “Look, but never – ever – touch!”
All this to say that health was hardly a foreign topic to our entourage. And thus we were ripe for a real, first-hand, French encounter.
Pregnant women, I knew, were at risk to many things. With the visit of Petra, our willowy (but for her four-month bulge), Finnish friend, I washed vegetables especially carefully. I cooked chicken particularly thoroughly. I prayed that three-and-a-half-year old Laurelle would leave the school’s rampant gastro bug at school.
She didn’t.
Happily Petra didn’t succumb to the local pre-school’s super gastro. But travel is tough on bodies, particularly pregnant ones. On Saturday night, at the good hour of 9:30 pm – impeccably timed to coincide with la Côte d’Azur’s big night out, not to mention two days’ air travel that would begin for Petra and Michael early the next morning – our household learned that something was ailing Petra. Something female and more private than a gastro super-bug. Something that, given her pregnant state, had to be taken care of with urgency. And definitely before tomorrow morning’s flight.
The medical community in our household, including the now-weepy Petra, agreed that this patient would be fine as long as she got the right pills. For these pills, however, she needed a prescription. A French prescription.
I am prepared for things like this. I am a mother. I have German roots. I hardwire emergency contact numbers into my mobile phone’s SIM card.
I whipped out a list of medical and emergency telephone numbers that I keep in my all-important kitchen drawer. Pierre’s first-tongue French did the talking, and my German industriousness did the paper-based walking.
First call: Dr. Laurent, our kindly and ever-watchful GP.
No surprises, the good doctor wasn’t in his cabinet on Saturday night. Our call also failed to forward onto his home as it sometimes does. (When Dr. Laurent does pick up at home, I always fear it’s a grand intrusion on his privacy, but I’m jolly glad to hear his voice. Even if he’s wearing slippers.)
On Saturday night Dr. Laurent’s mobile phone also went to messages.
Next try? The number I’d jotted down for instances when Dr. Laurent was unavailable. A recorded French telephone lady explained with firmness, “Le numéro n’est pas attribué.” Wrong number.
Knowing that French law requires one area pharmacy to remain open through the night, I called our two locals – just in case one was open and the pharmacien-cum-médecin was in. They weren’t and he wasn’t.
Another local telephone number on my emergency list (that is, NOT a scary two-digit one that summons the police, ambulance or firemen) was entitled “Ambulance 24H/24.” It looked promising without pricking the sirens. Le numéro n’est pas attribute.
Next on my list: Hôpital de la Fontonne. Le numéro n’est pas attribute.
I was beginning to feel very un-German.
The yellow pages came to my rescue. L’Hôpital de la Fontonne’s switchboard operator put us through to an operator for les urgences. He advised that their emergency room was heaped. Best not to come in until at least 11:00 pm. Why not try the hospital in Mougins? Or Cannes? Or, he suggested, what about phoning SAMU?
SAMU stands for “le Service d’Aide Médicale Urgente.” It’s France’s ambulance service. SAMU has a scary two-digit telephone number.
Dialing “18” was a wrong number. The call connected us with SAMU Nice. We don’t live in Nice.
The kind folks at SAMU Nice re-directed us to SAMU Antibes.
SAMU Antibes, yes, could send around an ambulance. We hesitated. Whirling sirens seemed a bit extreme for Petra’s condition. The operator at SAMU Antibes made a few other suggestions. Why not try Hôpital Saint Roche in Nice? They could offer a private doctor with no wait and an open pharmacy next door.
Enticing, but Nice – as we had just been saying – was not exactly next door to us. A definite maybe. We took the number.
What about SOS Médecins? The operator at SAMU Antibes explained that the service sends a doctor-on-call to your doorstep. She gave us another number.
Okay, another definite maybe, but a doctor-on-call could only provide the feted prescription. What about a pharmacy to dole out the pills on Saturday night? Which is Antibes’ 24-hour pharmacie du jour?
We could find out, our contact explained, by calling yet another number. We scrawled these digits on our increasingly dogeared page of urgent telephone numbers and rung off with SAMU Antibes.
Hello, Hôpital Saint Roche? You’re for real? You actually have NO wait? Great. You’re where exactly? Okay, maybe we’ll be in.
We rang off and did the drive-time calculations. We decided to make one more call.
And so, a full 12 phone calls after our “emergency procedure” began, we spoke with the operator at SOS Médecins. She declared that, yes, a doctor who would be on our doorstep within an hour.
In the flurry of the moment, we didn’t take time to reflect how amazing this fact was. That here in Antibes, in the middle of la Côte d’Azur on a Saturday night, there was a medical doctor who, for a EUR 100 fee, happily would make house visits to see someone who wasn’t dying.
And it was a good thing no one was dying given the time it took us to find this saint.
As Jean, our own, in-house physician, said, “Now that’s first-class service. You’d never get a doctor in your home on Saturday night in Quebec.” What’s more, our Finnish guests even would have a moment to pack their suitcases before the doorbell rang.
To underscore the eminence of France’s medical system, I have since done a small bit of research. What I discovered was blatantly straightforward: When the WHO assessed the world health care system in 2000, it found that France provided the “best overall health care” in the world.
It’s a fairly decent summary of the situation – as long as you know where to find the goods.
But we could not yet celebrate France’s health care. The SOS Médecins doctor would provide Petra’s pivotal prescription, but where was the open pharmacy?
Pierre made his thirteenth phone call. He dialed the last number that SAMU Antibes had provided, the Antibes pharmacy hotline.
He got the local police station. Could they tell us which pharmacy was open through the night?
No, not exactly, the officer told us. We had to physically bring our hot, new prescription into the police station on Avenue des Frères Olivier in downtown Antibes. After inspecting the paper, the on-duty fonctionnier would tell us where to go to get the prescription filled.
This is one way that France looks after its unemployment figures.
Et voilà, at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday night, a short, smiling doctor with combed-over brown hair arrived at Bellevue. As he and Petra headed into a quiet room, I was summoned as translator – a scary mandate for a French student who is supposed to negotiate pills for a pregnant woman. Fortunately the doctor spoke some English and Petra some French, which meant they only needed me for the more involved parts of the conversation, which is exactly when I felt inept.
Petra-the-nurse had self-diagnosed correctly. Yes, for purposes of full disclosure, she admitted to a mild gastro from Laurelle earlier in the day. But that was of no importance. Petra soon had a couple pills to take her through the next morning. She also had an all-important, written prescription for more.
The cool-headed doctor discouraged us from filling the prescription that night. “C’est compliqué,” he said, brushing off the police station – all-night pharmacy two-step. (That’s not all that has been compliqué, I thought.) He recommended that Petra head to the pharmacy at the airport in the morning.
Which is exactly what she chose to do. And I’m happy to report that, Sunday morning and all, Petra got her pills, and life continued as normal for her and her fetus.
But not so for most everyone else associated with Bellevue.
Within a day of Petra and Michael’s departure, Pierre succumbed to the pre-school’s gastro super-bug.
So did Ginette, our nurse in continuing residence from Quebec.
So did Jennifer, our nanny, with all the downstream scheduling side effects.
So did my mother, who departed Bellevue the same morning as Petra and Michael did, and who feared her in-flight behavior would cause the entire passenger roster on her transatlantic flight to be quarantined.
So did Michael, Petra’s husband, once he touched down in Finland two days later.
Laurelle, original carrier of the super-bug, bounces on with life as normal. Her gastro a long-lost memory, she now engages me, her dutiful, German-seeded mother, in Chapter Two of The Epic Adventures of Pre-School Maladies.
With our bags nearly packed for another family adventure – setting up a new opportunity for the perfectly imperfect timing of Francois’ Law – I pound Antibes’ streets. I engage the city’s daytime pharmaciens.
I’m hoping against all hopes that, with the right potions and lotions, Laurelle won’t bring home the super-bug that reigned in her pre-school class this week. Lice.
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