It was bound to happen...

Yes, it was bound to happen sometime. Ryan had a doctor's appointment today, but Mark could not take him because he was throwing up all night last night...and has spent the day today laying on the couch or our bed with a fever. Poor guy. So.... guess what this means. Yes. EEEK! I had to take Ryan to the doctor today.

To make matters worse, Lena had missed the last 3 days of school before Christmas break because of a fever. The fever went away after a number of days, but a bad cough came on. Sadly, she's had the cough for something like 12 days now and it's not getting better, so we knew we had to take her to the doctor. So.... guess what this means. Yes. EEEK! I had to take Lena to the doctor today.

Not once, but twice, - ME - this greenhorn American who can speak French at about the level of a 2 or 3 year old got to take 2 of her children to the doctor today. Let me tell you a little bit about going to the doctor in France. It's really not like going to the doctor in America - at all. Here are some of the differences:

1 - I expected a doctor's office building. Nope! The doctor's office is in a regular apartment building. One room is a waiting room, another is the office of the doctor complete with a desk and computer and an examination table.

2 - No receptionists to be found. Yep - that's right! No desk to check into, but a waiting room. You walk into the office/apartment and sit down and wait - without checking in with anybody.

3 - And, there are no nurses in the doctor's office. Just a doctor. The doctor manages the patients himself/herself. They do it all - check-in, question asking, temperature taking, weight-taking, examination work, prescription writing and collecting payment complete with a receipt given before a warm handshake and a nice "au revoir" (good-bye) and "bonne soiree" (good evening).

I took some photos to show you...

The door to the doctor's office. (The black thing on the left side of the photo is the elevator in the apartment building. It looks like a cage.)

The first thing you see as you walk into the office. We eventually learned the doctor comes out of this door to call the next patient.

The waiting room, complete with bundled up and smiling Lena.

There were piles of magazines...in French. Here's an October issue of Elle.

There was even a separate waiting room for patients with flu syptoms.

As if these things were not entertaining enough, Lena's visit turned into a little adventure. Let me explain what happened.

The kind doctor (who was replacing the regular doctor on vacation), listened to Lena's lungs and tapped Lena's back repeatedly and determined that an x-ray was needed to see what was going on with her right lung. He made a phone call to verify that an x-ray could be taken and then gave us directions to a building where we could go for an x-ray. Thankfully, I keep a map of our city in my purse and he showed me exactly where to go.

So, off we went. We walked the 4 blocks to the office only to find out that it was closed until January 3rd for remodeling work. What to do? Well, for one...thank God again and again that my daughter speaks French well! She understood the note on the door to mean that we need to go to another office to get the x-ray taken. We jotted down the address and were off again.

As we were walking the 10 blocks or so to the next office, I was thinking how insane this was to my American mind. Here, I have been spending the last many days carefully keeping my daughter out of the cold night air so that she doesn't cough horrifically. (One of the times we went out last week, she coughed so hard that when we got home she literally threw up.) But, no. We were now walking about 14 blocks to an x-ray office in the cold night air.

We did find the office and the people there were waiting for us. They took an x-ray of Lena's chest and quickly discovered what I was expecting: bronchitis. So, with x-ray in hand, we headed back to the doctor's office. Another 14 block walk in the cold night air, but this time I knew my daughter had bronchitis. Lovely! The doctor looked at the x-ray, wrote a prescription and we were on our way.

Here's a photo of the place where we got an x-ray taken.

But, before returning home to the warm air of our apartment, we had to go to the pharmacy for medicine. Now, this is the part that is much like America. It's that reality that you now know what's wrong - such relief! But, it's going to require a trip to the pharmacy for the miracle medicine that will fix everything before you can go home.

Only, this time, the pharmacy is across the street from our house and super, super fast! And, medicine is super, super cheap! (Some other time I'll have to write about medicine. That's a whole subject in itself - and also very different than America.) Oh, and when Lena and I walked into the door of the apartment we heard Todd announce "Ryan just threw up." Ryan added, "It was tons and tons." Why do boys love gross stuff?

So, there you have it. My first trip to the doctor with the kids. Both Ryan and Lena did fabulously speaking French with the doctors and compensating for my poor French. But, it was tremendous motivation to work hard at learning this language! A good dose of medicine for this Mom you could say.

Before I leave you, I'll include a photo of the lovely flowers our neighbors brought when we had them over a couple Sundays ago. I love many things about France, and one of those things that I love are the gift or flower bearing guests. A lovely and heart-warming tradition, I would say!


Have a Happy New Year!