Yesterday I was reminded yet again of why one should avoid going to the doctor in France if at all possible. After having gotten over my unpleasant experience of the 'visite medicale' which I have to go through every 6 months to prove that I am fit for work, I thought I would make an appointment with my local GP to see if she could do anything for my back ache or sleeping problems. I have been putting this off for a long time now, as I have had a bad back for months and have not been bothered to go to the doctor to get a referral to the physio so that I can get my back massaged and put back into its correct position. Now it is all too clear to me why I was putting this off in the first place.
After waiting for almost an hour in the waiting room because the doctor was running late, I was then told I would be having an appointment with her assistant, who was apparently qualified for 'normal' consultations. Having only been to this doctor once before I had no real attachment to her, and so was quite happy to go with the assistant into another room and get it over and done with.
I told her that I had come for 2 reasons - the first being a problem that I was having with my back. I explained that I had pain in my back and muscle ache as well as tension and pain in my neck. I further explained that I had experienced back pain before and that I used to go to the physio in Australia for this very problem and that the physio had told me that I have scoliosis and as well as this, my pelvis tilts when I walk and therefore I need realignment of my pelvis every once in a while because when it is unaligned it causes pain in my lower back. After this animated conversation involving many actions and gestures given my lack of medical vocabulary in French, she decided that she would examine my back to see if she could see any signs of what I had described. She poked and prodded me, asking where it hurt, which she soon realised was pretty much along the entire length of my spine. She then examined my hips and told me that even she could feel that my right hip was lower than my left and that it was not aligned. Afterwards she got me to bend over and straighten up again, to which she discovered that I did have scoliosis and that I wasn't just a French hypochondriac. After completely agreeing with the diagnosis that I had just given her, she then decided that she wasn't qualified to make that diagnosis and that I would have to see a Radiologist to have a series of x-rays to see if I have scoliosis - even though every doctor and physio that I have ever seen, including her, has told me that this is the case.
I should have known through the doctor's lack of confidence in her own judgment that it was not worth discussing my second problem with her, but I stupidly decided to ask for advice regarding my sleeping pattern. I described that I work at night and that I have a bizarre schedule where I continually change the number of days I work in a row and the number of days that I have off. I told her that I hadn't found a good rhythm, that I was very often tired and that I slept at different times every day. I also explained that I didn't like the idea of keeping my strange sleeping hours on my days off because I didn't like being awake all night if I was not working and that sleeping during the day on one's day off can be depressing because you never see the light of day. This is where she came up with what I like to call her 'stroke of genius'. She told me that what she thought would be good for me is a medication that is used for people suffering from jet lag - given that it seemed my job was a bit like being jet lagged all the time. She wrote down the name of the drug on a piece of paper and gave it to me - I thought that a post-it note was a slightly unconventional way of writing a prescription, but took the paper nevertheless. She then told me that the drug was not sold in France - therefore something incredibly useful and convenient for me (rolls eyes). She asked where I was from and when I said Australia, she said she had no idea if it was sold there but thought that maybe someone could try and buy it (melatonine) for me and send it on over. However, given that prescribing a medicine which is unavailable in France was not very efficient of her, she then decided she would prescribe me some other drugs in the meantime.
She tapped away at her computer, clicking on every kind of sleeping pill she could find and adding it to the list for my prescription - given that my problem is not actually the fact that I can't get to sleep, I was wondering what the hell she was doing. It was like watching a little kid play with a new toy - every 30 secs she would read the description of a drug in her computer system, get excited, make a noise to express the excitement and then add it to the list. Then she would find the next drug in the list, realise that it was even better than the one before, remove the one she had just added and replace it with the latest.
After a good 10 minutes of this little game she had finally made her selection and was very proud and satisfied with it. She explained to me that she was giving me a prescription for Doliprane (which is like prescribing someone mild panadol) for the pain in my back (even I know that's not going to do anything), a drug which relaxes the muscles and sends you to sleep (thereby apparently curing both my tight back and my sleeping problem) and then a drug which boosts your energy and wakes you up which I'm to take whenever I get up....
Noticing my concerned look and probably picking up on my disapproval of her, she then said to me confidently that the best thing to do would be to fly to the United States where the jet lag drug is readily available and buy it there! I'm not even kidding!! I did not want to point out the fact that maybe there is actually a good reason why it is not sold in France 'the land of the drug' and that perhaps it is not very good for the body. Or the more obvious fact that perhaps it's not safe to take a drug that is designed for people experiencing jet lag on a regular or every day basis. I guess the good news is that were I to spend hundreds of euros to fly to the U.S to pick up this drug, then at least when i get back and am incredibly jet lagged from the whirl wind trip, bingo I have the medication required.
So after this supposed normal consultation I was sent away with a referral to a radiologist, some paracetamol, a drug to send me to sleep and a drug to wake me up - sound healthy to you? All I had gone there for in the first place was a referral to a physio and some advice on when the best time to sleep is when one has a working schedule like I do.
And for those of you thinking that this is a one off strange occurrence, it's not! Going to the doctor in France always results in a list a mile long of prescriptions. I confirmed this when talking to a friend about it last night and she told me that the last time she went to the doctor for a cold, she was sent home with a prescription for aspirin, two pain killers to alternate between, an inhaler, cough syrup and eye drops!!! it was a cold people - what happened to bed rest and a honey and lemon drink.....
