Chapter 5 chapter Five

The cover showed a snail sitting on the toilet, looking a bit depressed, as if it had been sitting on the toilet for a long time without any results, its tentacles drooping, and its eyes dim.There are two large characters above this sad picture: Constipation. Pharmacy Adventures (1) The other day I went to the drug store in Apt to buy toothpaste and sunscreen, two simple little things that are 100% healthy, but when I got home and pulled the stuff out of the bag, I found out that it was treating me The pharmacy lady included an educational but confusing gift—a beautifully printed and colorful booklet.The cover showed a snail sitting on the toilet, looking a bit depressed, as if it had been sitting on the toilet for a long time without any results, its tentacles drooping, and its eyes dim.There are two large characters above this sad picture: Constipation.

God!What the hell did I do that she was going to give me this?Do I look like a constipated person?Or is my purchase of toothpaste and sunscreen somewhat unusual to a pharmacist, implying some indigestion?Maybe the lady knew something I didn't, so I read on. "Constipation is quite common," the brochure said. The author said that one in five French people suffered from bloating and gastrointestinal problems.However, for a person who is not good at observing like me, I really can’t see any difference in those people walking on the street, sitting in bars, cafes or even restaurants. According to the author, 20% of the French people, despite Suffering from abdominal distension, he would still let go of his stomach and eat two hearty meals every day in the restaurant. In the face of such adversity, how strong this is!

I always thought that Provence was one of the healthiest places in the world. The air is fresh, the climate is comfortable, fresh fruits and vegetables are everywhere, and olive oil is used for cooking. It seems that there is no such thing as stress in Provence. I am afraid it will never be found in the world. Such a unique place, everyone here looks very healthy.But if one-fifth of these rosy-cheeked, high-appetites are actually covering up a stomach ailment, what else might they be covering up?So, I decided to pay special attention to what people in Provence were complaining about and what diseases they were treating. Gradually, I found that there was indeed a disease here, and it seemed to me that it had even spread to the whole country, and that was depression.

The French never feel unwell, only worry about health crisis, the most common of which is "liver crisis".Considering the ouzo they drank, the five-course meals they swallowed, and the brandy and "honorary" wine that were indispensable for everything from the opening of the car show to the annual meeting of the village political party, the liver was overwhelmed. , Rebellion is also reasonable.In fact, to deal with this crisis, the simple cure is to stay away from alcohol and drink more mineral water, but there is a more reassuring way, that is, to go to the pharmacy and be diagnosed by a sympathetic lady in white behind the counter.It's reassuring because it's a strong indication that you're sick, not self-indulgent.

I used to wonder why most pharmacies put the chair between the surgical tray and the liposuction kit, now I know it's so that patients can wait more comfortably for Mr. While massaging his swollen throat, delicate kidneys, clogged intestines, and all the parts that tormented him, he whispered in detail how he had come to this miserable state.The patient and medically trained pharmacist listened carefully, asked a few questions, and proposed some possible solutions, and then the medicine packs, medicine jars, and injections appeared one by one, and then discussed in depth for a while, and finally came to a conclusion , and Mr. So-and-so carefully folded up the life-threatening pieces of paper by which he could claim most of his medical bills back from Social Security.It was another 15 or 20 minutes before the person behind could move a seat forward.

In fact, only those patients who are relatively healthy will go to the pharmacy to see a doctor by themselves. For severe patients or people who think they are seriously ill, most places, even relatively remote rural areas like ours, have an emergency specialist Internet, which often amazes and envies tourists from cities, because in big cities, only millionaires can feel so comfortable even when they are sick.And here, all towns and villages are equipped with ambulances on call 24 hours a day.Professional nurses would come to the door, as would doctors, a service I've heard is almost extinct in London.

In the early summer of last year, we had a little experience of the French medical system, and we were really impressed.The guinea pig used in the experiment was a young American tourist named Benson, who was traveling to Europe for the first time.When I picked him up at the Avignon train station, he greeted me hoarsely, coughing with a handkerchief over his mouth.I asked him what was wrong. Pointing to his throat, he panted and made some noise, "Mona!" Mona?I didn't understand, but I know that Americans have some diseases that are much more profound than ours. For example, congestion is called hematoma, headache is called migraine, and postnasal drip.So I muttered something like fresh air will get him all right soon and helped him into the car.It was on the way home that I figured out that Mona was a nickname for "mono," an inflammation of the throat caused by a viral infection. "Throat hurts like swallowing broken glass," Benson said, curled up behind sunglasses and a handkerchief. "We've got to call my brother in Brooklyn, New York, he's a doctor."

When we got home, we found out that the phone didn't work, and it was the beginning of the long holiday and weekend, which meant we would be without the phone for three full days.Normally, it would be a blessing, but right now, we have to call Brooklyn.There is a newly developed specific antibiotic that can treat all known forms of mononucleosis, Benson said.I rushed to the public phone booth in Baumet Town. When the Brooklyn Hospital was looking for Benson's brother all over the world, I kept feeding five francs to the phone.Finally, Benson's brother finally gave me the name of the miracle drug.Then I called a doctor and asked if he could come to my house.

The doctor arrived in less than an hour. Benson rested in a dark room wearing sunglasses, and the doctor began to examine the patient. "Sir..." The doctor just started, but Benson interrupted him. "Mona!" he said, pointing to his throat. "what?" "Mona! Monsieur, mononucleosis." "Oh, mononucleosis, possible, possible." The doctor looked at Benson's red throat and took out a cotton swab, apparently to take a sample for a virus test. "Now, can this gentleman take off his trousers?" Benson looked over his shoulder suspiciously as he slowly undid his Calvin Klein jeans halfway. a syringe.

"Tell him I'm allergic to most antibiotics and he should call my brother in Brooklyn." "what?" I explained what the problem was.Does the doctor happen to have this wonder drug in his medicine cabinet?the answer is negative.We look at each other, Benson's bare bottom next to him, spasming with his painful coughing.The doctor said that Benson must be given injections to reduce the inflammation, and that the injections rarely cause side effects, and I told Benson all of this. "Then...alright!" Benson lay down, the doctor waved his arm like a matador, and inserted the syringe exaggeratedly. "All right!"

While Benson waited for the anaphylaxis to strike and make him dizzy, the doctor said he would send a nurse over for injections twice a day.He also wished us a great evening.Benson responded with a noise covering his handkerchief.I feel like a good night is out of the question. The nurses came and went, the test results came in, and the doctor showed up as scheduled on Saturday evening.Our young people are right, it is indeed "mononucleosis", but we can also subdue it with French medicine.The doctor is like an imaginative poet, and the prescriptions are pouring out of his pen one after another, and it seems that every tiny available resource is being used.He ended up handing over a wad of paper filled with writing and wishing us a happy weekend.But that's also unlikely. Finding a pharmacy open in the French countryside on holidays and weekends is not easy, and the only pharmacy for miles around is the Defendant Pharmacy on the outskirts of Cavillon.I got there at 8:30 and met a guy who was holding a thick stack of prescriptions like me, and we looked at the notice on the glass door that said: "Open at ten o'clock." The man sighed and looked me up and down. "Emergency?" "It's not me, it's a friend of mine." He nodded.This dude has a frozen shoulder and mold on his feet and isn't going to wait an hour and a half in the sun.He sat down in the aisle by the gate and began to study the first sheet of the large stack of prescriptions in his hand.I decided to have breakfast first. Pharmacy Adventures (2) "Remember to come back before ten o'clock, there will be many people today." He said. How did he know?Could it be said that going to the pharmacy on Sunday morning is the custom of the French before lunch?I thanked him, but decided not to heed his advice, and passed the wait in a café with an outdated copy of the Journal de Provence. I got back to the pharmacy just before ten o'clock, and my God, it seemed like the whole of Cavillon was here.Many people stood there holding thick stacks of prescriptions, exchanging their illnesses with each other, as if an angler was describing his prize-winning fish.The gentleman with the sore throat boasted of his sore throat; the lady with the varicose veins recounted how her veins had begun to swell and varicose; Will check the time before pushing the door to the still locked pharmacy.At last, amidst mutterings of "at last it's open" and "here she is," a lady came out from behind the dispensary, opened the door, and cleverly stepped aside to allow the rushing crowd to pass.Again, I appreciate that the Anglo-Saxon habit of queuing doesn't work in France. I waited for half an hour before finding a window to hand over my prescription to the pharmacist.She took out a plastic shopping bag, filled it with a bunch of boxes and bottles, stamped each one after processing, and then kept a copy for herself and the other for me.When the bag was almost bursting, there was only one prescription left.The pharmacist reappeared five minutes later, said it was out of stock, and asked me to look elsewhere.Even so, the situation is not too bad, after all, the important medicines are already in the bag.In my opinion, these medicines are enough to bring an entire Legion back to life. Benson sucked and swished the medicine according to the prescription, and the next morning he seemed to have escaped from the shadow of death, and he recovered enough to go to the pharmacy in Mena Village with us to find the missing medicine. When we got there, an old gentleman was sitting on a stool, waiting for the apothecary to fill his sachet with the panacea.Maybe he was curious to see what strange diseases foreigners would suffer from. When the pharmacist was dispensing our medicines, he sat there, and when our medicines were all packed and placed on the counter, he came over to find out. . The pharmacist opened the bag and pulled out a foil packet, about the same size as the thick Meco Comfort 5. "Twice a day," she motioned to Benson. Benson shook his head, touched his throat and said, "It's too big, I can't swallow such a big thing." We translated to the pharmacist, and before she could answer, the old gentleman burst out laughing, leaned back and forth dangerously on the stool, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, wrinkled like a tree root. The pharmacist also smiled, and gracefully pointed up the medicine wrapped in tin foil, "This is a suppository." Benson looked a little overwhelmed.Still laughing, the old gentleman jumped off the stool and took the suppository from the pharmacist. "Look here," he said to Benson, "this is how it will be used." He moved away from the counter, bent down, lifted the suppository over his head, suddenly stretched his arm back, and stuffed the medicine forcefully into the back of his trousers.He looked at Benson, "Got it?" "In the ass?" Benson shook his head again. "God, this is so weird." He put on his sunglasses and took a few steps back. "We don't use that in our place." We tried to explain to him that this was the most effective way to get the medicine into the bloodstream, but he didn't believe it.He didn't even think it was funny when we said later that it wouldn't cause a sore throat.I've often wondered what he'd say to his doctor brother back in Brooklyn. Not long after, I ran into my neighbor Marceau in the woods and told him how we had learned the suppository lesson, and he thought it was funny.But for a patient who went to the hospital to have his cecum cut and woke up to find that his left leg was gone, such outrageous things were not funny at all. I thought it must be fake, but Marceau insisted it was true. "I'd rather go to the veterinarian if I was sick. The veterinarian is at least sober. I don't trust doctors." Fortunately, Marceau's views on the French medical industry do not reflect the reality.There may indeed be some doctors in Provence who have a penchant for amputations, but we never met them.In fact, aside from this "mono" encounter, we've only seen a doctor once, and that encounter was about bureaucracy. That time was to obtain our foreign population residence permit. We went through months of document wars, and finally reached a climax.We went to City Hall, the police station, the tax office, and back to City Hall.Everywhere we went, we were told there were other forms to fill out, which of course had to be picked up elsewhere.Finally, convinced that we had a full set of certificates, testimonials, statements, photographs and important data in our hands, we happily went to the town hall, thinking that this was the last hurdle on the way to victory. Our files have been scrupulously checked and everything seems to be going well.We have no criminal record, and we don't intend to grab the jobs of the French, so we shouldn't be a drag on this country.All right!Documents checked and we could finally live in legally. The secretary of the city hall smiled kindly and handed us two more forms. She said that we still need to do a physical examination to prove that we are both physically and mentally healthy.Dr. Fenollen of Bonnieux would be more than happy to oblige, and we were on our way again to Bonnieux. Dr. Fenelon was charming and lively, and he took an X-ray and then gave me a short questionnaire. Do you have neuropathy?No. Do you have epilepsy?No. Do you take drugs?Alcoholism?Do you pass out easily? I would have thought that we would also be asked about our bowel habits in order not to increase the constipated population in France, but for the Immigration Service, this does not seem to matter.We signed the form, and so did Dr. Fenollen.Then he opened the drawer and took out two other forms. He said apologetically, "Of course! You don't have any problems, it's just..." He shrugged and said that we had to go to Cavillon with the form for a blood test before issuing the health certificate. "What special tests are there?" "Yes..." He seemed more apologetic, "Syphilis."