Grasshoppers and Gangrene

I’m not a superstitious person, but what does it mean when you have a large map of a country hanging on your wall, and there is a grasshopper sitting on it, directly over the point where you live? That’s what I’m contemplating at the moment.

If you recall yesterday’s tear soaked installation on the blog, you know that I slipped on a peach in Paris and badly scrapped my left knee and foot. Examining the wound yesterday, I thought it seemed a bit “green” and so I called up the doctor at 4pm on a Friday. He answered the phone and said that I could come in, but that I would have to wait until he saw the other patients who had scheduled appointments. I said that was fine with me, I would bring a book to read.

Normally, the sight of my knee wouldn’t have bothered me and I wouldn’t have bothered the doctor. But just the week before, my horse riding buddy Norman was telling me a story about some man who contracted gangrene and each time that Norman saw the man, he was missing a piece of his body until one day he was dead. I thought perhaps Norman's story was a lesson that I should heed.

I arrived at the doctor’s office at 4:30. He doesn’t have another person helping him, no receptionist, no nurse, no secretary; I sat there wondering if he did his own janitorial work. There was one woman in the waiting room when I arrived, who I knew, and so we passed the time chatting while her fifteen-month-old toddler played in a plastic playhouse. The doctor opened the door to the waiting room, acknowledged both of us, and led her to his office. I remained behind reading some French celebrity magazine that amazingly, didn’t have a story or a photo about a Royal in it. Another couple arrived to see the doctor, sat down, and the man lit up a cigarette. Now that’s something you wouldn’t experience in the doctor’s waiting room in San Francisco! And I didn’t tell him to put it out. See how mellow and tolerant I’m becoming . . . thanks to Preston's guidance.

When the doctor’s patients are finished with their consultation, they leave via a back door, so I didn’t see the woman with whom I had been chatting when she departed. (The grasshopper is now heading north-east towards either Clermont-Ferrand or Lyon.) In the doctor’s office, we spoke English, and he said that I did have a mild infection, so he cleaned the scabs and bandaged my knee and foot.

He wrote out a prescription for bandages, antiseptic spray, and a vial of serum for a tetanus shot. (The grasshopper chose Lyon as his next destination. Smart bug. I’d pick Lyon over Clermont-Ferrand any day.) I asked the doctor what I was to do with the tetanus shot stuff. Why I was to call a nurse and she would come to my house and give me a shot, he said. I didn’t believe him, so I repeated what he said to me, and he repeated it back to me. He handed me a bill for 20Euros ($24) and I wrote out a check for him. He placed the check in a fanny pack he wore slung low around his waist.

I drove to centre ville to the pharmacy, being forced to exit the car with my heavily bandaged leg in front of the tea salon with all of its outdoor tables and chairs filled with afternoon tea drinkers. I scanned the faces of the patrons to see if there was anyone I knew, anyone that I’d have to run up to explain how I received my wound, before they could circulate some wild rumor about the Americaine who fell off a horse, or was beaten up by a sheep. I didn’t recognize anyone so I scurried to the pharmacy.

The French pharmacy is a throw-back to an earlier time when the pharmacist was often consulted and trusted more than a doctor. Many French people will still go to the pharmacist for a medical consultation before they’ll head to the doctor. The pharmacist fills prescriptions, is an herbalist, and can give you access to all sorts of medications that a doctor would have to sign off on in the U.S. The woman ahead of me was asking the pharmacist what she should do about her dog’s fleas. My total tab at the pharmacy was 72 Euros ($89). The tetanus serum comprised the bulk of that amount.

I resisted the temptation to visit the bakery before I headed home. I felt so sad yesterday that I wasn’t eating and so I decided to take advantage of the sadness, and try to drop a pound. You know I'm depressed if I don't go the bakery it there's one in sight.

I drove over to Therese’s house across the road from me. Her mother was sitting outside in her wheelchair while Therese was tending to her garden. Therese takes care of her invalid mother and a nurse visits their house every other day. Being familiar with the home nurse system, I asked Therese to call and request the nurse for me. She told me that her usual nurse was off in Sengal for a vacation. Therese called the nursing office but no one answered so she left a message on their phone saying that the person who lived “across the street” from her needed a shot. Her directions were so vague, and she didn’t leave my phone number, so I assumed that the nurse would have to call her back before she showed up at my place. I told Therese I would leave my vaccine in her refrigerator. She asked why I would do that, and I said I was going to visit my friend Pierre-Yves and his wife, and that I would return to Therese’s to find out when the nurse was coming after they called her back. Therese said that the nurse wouldn’t call her back; she would just show up at my house, so I better go home.

Before I left, she told me how nice Preston was to her. He went by her house before he left to say au revoir. I started crying telling her I was sad because I missed him so much. She put her arms out and wrapped them around me in a big hug that was exactly what I needed. She said, “I feel the same every time Bernard leaves on the weekend to return to Toulouse.” This wasn’t comforting. Bernard is forty-eight years old. I didn’t look forward to falling into a deep depression every time Preston left after visiting me.

I went home, wanting badly to go visit Pierre-Yves, my French friend who is fluent in English, so I could cry on his shoulder in ENGLISH. The problem yesterday was that I was very lonely and sad because I couldn’t pour my heart out to my French friends. Having a limited vocabulary when you’re trying to express angst is more frustrating than holding in the angst and being engulfed with grief. So I went home, wishing that I could go up to P-Y’s and assuming that no nurse was going to come to my house on a Friday evening.

Pierre-Yves called to see how things had gone with the doctor. I gave him the report and told him I was waiting for the nurse to arrive, but since it was approaching seven, I didn’t think she’d show up. P-Y said, “Oh, don’t worry. Those nurses always show up.”

The nurse pulled in the driveway at 6:45. I was holding a bouquet of half-dead geraniums in my hand that I taking to Blanche. The nurse gave me my shot. She filled out a simple one-page form that I could give to the French government if I was a citizen to get her fee reimbursed. She then told me that I owed her 7.90 Euros! That’s fewer than ten U.S. dollars! I said, “Why your gasoline costs more than that.” She shrugged.

I like this socialized medicine stuff. Now, if only they would socialize the pharmacies and the drug companies. But that is only a dream. It won’t be long before they won’t have universal health care in France.

I do have several friends who live here who have had cancer. And the consensus seems to be that as long as you aren’t in the Paris region, you get great healthcare in France, even for health crises that are graver than scraped knees. The problem in the Paris region is that the system requires longer waits, and when you have cancer, that’s a problem. However, I know of one woman who lives part time in New York City, and she chose to have all her breast cancer treatment done here in France rather than going back to the States. So I get the sense that the people I’ve met do trust the French health care system. It consistently rank at or near the top, depending on the year, of the World Health Organization’s ranking of the quality and availability of the world’s medical systems. I know of someone’s grandson who had a heart-lung transplant two years ago, and he’s still kicking, in fact, now he’s in such good shape he’s stealing motor bikes for a living.

My knee isn’t so green this morning, and the red streaks that were emanating from the scabs have lessened so I’m not so frightened about gangrene. And, my girlfriend who’s a doctor in Pasadena told me that I don’t have to worry either. That gangrene happens when your circulation isn’t good. She’s flying out here on the 23rd, so I have her visit to look forward to. Today I’m going into the big town to have lunch with a fellow San Franciscan, well he's more a person from Marin County, who bought a house here. Thankfully, I’m feeling better and he won’t have to listen to me crying about how much I miss Preston. Well, maybe just a little bit.

Have a peach-free day! (The grasshopper went on to Geneva and then I lost track of him.)