Our favorite pharmacie

 
It was bound to happen to one of us at some point somewhere, I'm just glad that it happened somewhere where the one left standing was able to speak the language a little. On Friday, the day after we had our hopes for a lovely week on Lake Como in Italy dashed, the day after we'd spent hours and many frustrating phone calls trying to find a working solution, Rob fell ill with another dreadful intestinal malady--but this one was really bad. Fortunately, we'd already booked extra days in our hotel--we were to check out on Monday instead of Saturday. Also fortunately, my French (such as it is) was improving rapidly, so when I rushed into our local pharmacie, I was able to blurt out, "Bonjour madame. Excusez moi pour vous deranger, mais j'ai une probleme. Avez-vous un, uh, uh....thermometer?" Between my paltry French and the pharmacist's paltry English (for which she apologized, and I said "Non, non, non, c'est votre natione! Moi, je suis desolee pour ma francaise mal!" [No, it's your country. I'm sorry for my bad French.] Or something to that effect), and lots of mime, we were able to get me a thermometer. In Celsius. Which meant that, yes, we had to reach for the calculator every single time we needed to discover just how high Rob's fever had climbed.

On Saturday, when things were much worse for poor Rob, it was clear that we needed some help. I asked the hotel receptionist about seeing a doctor, and she phoned up a Parisian service called Médecine SOS. When you call this service (at 01 47 07 77 77) any time, you'll get a piping hot doctor delivered to your door in thirty minutes or less. 

The First Doctor
We're pretty sure we pulled Docteur Bernard Bonduelle away from his mistress. It was just after lunchtime, he was "on call," and obviously not too happy with our having summoned him. He was a slim man in his late forties, with beautifully cropped brown hair, a sour expression on his face, and, while he wasn't wearing an ascot, he could have been. He also reeked of tobacco smoke. He asked a few questions, prodded Rob a few times, then pronounced his verdict: Rob had a stomach flu, and would be just fine tomorrow.

"Are you sure it's not food poisoning?" Rob asked. 

Docteur Bonduelle fairly spit in disgust. No, it was not food intoxication. With food intoxication, one does not have the fevair. Rob, who had had the fevair with his food intoxication before, asked if Docteur Bonduelle was sure. Pft! Docteur Bonduelle was so sure that he wrote three prescriptions to treat Rob's "flu." One (as if to underscore his certainty in the diagnosis) was for the fevair, one was for the nausea that Rob didn't have, and the third was an "antiseptic." I looked this medication up on the web, and it seems as if it isn't prescribed outside France. Nonetheless, with childlike faith in the medical profession, I trotted back over the the pharmacie. (Can I just say a quick word about pharmacies? They're fabulous. Besides all the medication and stuff, they have a stunning array of bath and cosmetic supplies, including thalassotherapie baths and wonderful triple-milled Roger & Gallet soaps in scents like Cherry-Tomato and Pink Grapefruit. So, my trips were not altogether unpleasant, though I did my best not to really enjoy them.) 

Sunday saw Rob no better. In fact Rob was worse. Quite a bit worse, despite all the strange French medications he valiantly choked down. For most of the day, we were in denial. "Just give the medicine time to work," we said. But by evening, it became obvious--you don't even want to know how--that another call to Médecine SOS was in order. Thus was summoned...

The Second Doctor
It is wrong, terribly, terribly wrong, when your husband is lying on his deathbed, barely able to rise to get to the bathroom, to think that the Docteur who has come to save him is cute. So, let the record here show that I didn't. I swear to God. Docteur Etienne Aproh, arrived with a thin indentation down the side of his face from sleeping on the sofa. He was young--I'd say in his twenties--with disheveled brown hair. Rob later said that he looked just like he was in the French Resistance, and he did; his haircut was right out of 1940, and there was a world-weariness to his face that suggested long nights in bunkers smoking filterless cigarettes. He asked a few questions, got pissed because we spoke "English only," and prodded Rob a few times before delivering his verdict. Rob indeed did have food intoxication, probably salmonella. As he wrote his stack of prescriptions, we asked--anxiously, for we were being kicked out of our hotel the next day and there were no hotel rooms in all of Paris--whether it would be all right for Rob to travel soon. He replied, somewhat enigmatically,

"I am not worried."

We still don't know what the hell that was supposed to mean. Did it mean that, as Rob would be gone from Paris, it wasn't his problem, thus he wasn't worried? Did he just not like Rob and was therefore not particularly concerned about him? Maybe after dynamiting the Gestapo headquarters, the gastric problems of two little Americans didn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. We weren't about to ask.

--Lisa

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