Unfortunately I had to go to the Doctor,and since it was a unique experience I figured I would let you know about it. Jenn and I went to the beach what was two weeks ago now and had a good time! We both got nibbled on by something, produced something similar to what a mosquito bite would be. I got one on my hand, between my thumb's knuckle and wrist. It was normal on Monday but Tuesday morning had become very red and swollen. I figured I would wait it out and see what happened and see if it would heal itself. By thursday it was really getting painful and looking pretty bad so I headed down to the onsite nurse at work to see what she thought. She said I need to go to the Doctor.
One of my Coworkers recommended a doctor that spoke good english so I gave her a call. Her secretary didn't speak english so I passed the phone off to my other coworker to setup an appointment. The earliest appointment she had was the next week and we didn't want to wait the weekend to see what was going to happen, so I decided to go to the open clinic on that Friday morning. When I got to the office, the secretary was in a small hall that had 3 or 4 doors, each with a different doctor's name on them. I found the one I needed and went through it to a small 8-10 seats waiting room were there were three other women and a door. After what seemed like an eternity, I think it was around 2 hours to get the three women through, the doc came and I knew it was my turn. As I entered her office it had a formal desk area like you would see in an office where we sat. the rest of the room was one of the examining chairs(like most doctor offices have). We sat and I showed her my bite, she confirmed it was infected and she was rather concerned about it because it was coming up my arm. She had me move over the the examining chair and take my shirt off. She inspected my arm real quick, pushed in my armpit and checked my lymph nodes. She then had me put my shirt back on and head over to her desk again where she wrote me a prescription for amoxi and an anti inflamitory and a topical disenfectant spray. That didn't take long and I paid her and was on my way.
The interesting thing was how quick I was in there and the lack of service. I had a similar infection not to long ago in the states and it was significantly different. First, the nurse comes and gets you in the US and gets your weight, takes your temp and blood pressure, ect., none of which was even done for me. The last time I had such an infection, they went ahead and swabbed it for MRSA, which she didn't. I also recieved an injection of antibiotics wereas she didn't even mention an antibiotic shot. The other thing that kinda surprised me is the lack of sanitation. Maybe I missed her washing her hands somewhere along the line, but I'm pretty sure I didn't. She went straight from helping the person before me, to me, to looking at my infected hand, to pushing in my armpit, to writing my perscription, to dealing with my money to helping the next person. It was a small office with personal belongings and products piled on every ledge(lack of storage space?). It was very different from what I'm used to in the US. The other interesting part was the payment. You have to pay the Doctor, and she only took cash. Luckily my coworker warned me of this. It was 23 Euros for the visit!
I was off to the pharmacie to get my scripts filled. In france, the only place to get any sort of medication, vitamins, ect is at the pharmacie, and they are always seperate from any other store. I was able to communicate fairly easy with the lady at the pharmacie to get my meds. They came out to be a whopping 40 some Euros! Not bad.
I started the amoxi that day(friday) at lunch. It was fairly painful at this point. By saturday, my enitre had hand had swollen up and was huge. This lasted till around Monday or Tuesday when the swelling went down and the pain slowed as well. It leaked fluid Monday, tuesday and wednesday so I had to keep it covered. By thursday, yesterday, all the swelling was gone and it was down to looking like I had some sort of wound that was healing and no pain.
It was an interesting experience. I got the stuff I needed but have a major appreciation for the care we have at home as well as new look at what they do. Some of it probably isn't necessary, but I would take it any day over what they do here. The prices at home are significantly higher but also is the care in my opinion. It just seemed like the health care technology is a little behind ours over here. After talking with my coworkers a little, the government spends a ton of money subsidizing the doctors visits and the perscriptions and the Doctor did mention that things were to a very strict system in France when she was explaining the payment and script processes. I found it very interesting the large difference in care.
Cameron
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