I Heart the French Health Care System

Two weekends ago Matthew and I had a weekend get away (I will be blogging about that soon, hopefully!). On our drive home Sunday, I started to feel very achy all over. By the time we got home, I started thinking I was coming down with the flu. I had the fever, the all over body aches, the chills followed by sweating...but I did not have any of the cold symptoms. By Wednesday, most of my symptoms had subsided, but I was having severe pain in my stomach. Matthew came home from work early and called the doctor. There is an amazing service here called SOS Medecin. You can call this service and a doctor will come to your house! Within the hour, a doctor was in our living room (No waiting rooms with who knows what kind of germs. I spent my time waiting for the doctor in my pajamas, on my couch, watching TV!). After some very painful stomach mashing, he determined that I had either an intestinal infection or appendicitis. He told us I needed to go have blood drawn to determine if it was an infection. After explaining where to go, he told us "never mind", and that he would have the nurse come to us! We paid him his 32 euros (that's it! 32 euros to have a doctor come to your house!!!). An hour later, a nurse shows up to draw some blood. She only charged 7 euros! That night, the doctor called to say the blood work showed it was an infection, and set up an ultrasound for the next day to make sure the infection wasn't in any of the major organs. Unfortunately, I actually had to get dressed and leave the apartment for the ultrasound (can you tell how spoiled I am getting?). After all was said and done, the verdict was salmonella poisoning. Probably from some mussels I ate while we were on our weekend get away.

As the US tries to adopt a new health care system, I must say that I am loving living in France!