Off to the Medicin...

#95 Off To The Medicin...
Yesterday afternoon came our friends A&R to sit at tea (an English Thing you know!) with a delicious pastry bought at the grouches boulangerie at the round-about. The grouch there is the young woman who it seems is far less happy with her chosen career than she should/needs to be. Every order taken with a surley groan and a look that says "You English/American/Hollandaise swine, bothering ME like this, Get your bread somewhere else!". Nonetheless the breads and pastries from the place are superior so we all go and hope we get the nice middle aged woman instead. Such is our little world. There ARE several other choices, even the Proxie next door but that place gets the nod, surley or not.
We chatted away for a couple of hours about the weekend, the brocantes and the parties we attended. Such a Life we all lead together, like one big ex-pat family. Eventually I bothered "A" to tell us how to make a doctor's appointment in French as we have never done that here in the last 6 years of visits. We are both running low on our meds and need valid prescriptions to take to the pharmacy to get them refilled. A promptly took the phone and made the call herself and got ME an appointment in two or three easy sentences! A-bloody-mazing! Little does the Medicin (doctor) know he's getting BOTH of us for the same services...Kelly and I at the same time. We are joined at the hip. I will fill you in on the gory details when we get back.
GORY DETAILS: We walked thru the streets of Lignieres admiring all the old archetecture and all the newly painted shutters and doors. We arrived at an empty waiting room attached to the side of the Doctor's Grande Maison Du Bourg (Big City House) we sat down in the waiting room for a few minutes admiring the artwork and archetecture of the room. Soon the door to the doctor's office openned and he greeted us with a deep "Bonjour Mrdame (Miz-sur-dahm)", in we went and he invited us to sit down. His office space was chuck full of both medical equipment and art, drawings, etchings and paintings and a bronze sculpture of a human chest on the mantle.
He asked us in French (Remembering we were referred to him BECAUSE he spoke English!) after i said we were American, " What do you want?" or something to that effect. I explained I needed to get prescription refills for three drugs and produced the empty bottles for him. He quickly went to work checking the lables for dosage and soon called the pharmacist to aid in determining which could be had in France and what their names HERE were as well as any dosage differences. This took a bit of time, occassionally he would query us as to how often we took this or that one and what it was for. I always keep a list of my prescriptions and dosages with me in my wallet (good practice for travellers!) and gave him the sheet. He studied it and called once again to the pharmacist to enquire as to those drugs names etc. All in all a very efficient service done with a smile and friendliness that I didn't expect. He then asked me to come to the exam table so he could take my blood pressure and listen to my heart. "Bon, Bon" he said as he looked at the resulting measurement and then he listened to my heart with a stethescope, "Bon" he said and I was through. Then it was Kelly's turn. Same thing, he took her blood pressure but was not as happy with hers and told her so with a concerned look on his face. A few minutes later he had filled out a form on his computer and printed it, an invoice! 22 Euros each! Yea gads, such a bargain!
Only one thing, we only had 20's and 10 Euro notes, Kelly gave him 50 and he couldn't make change so gave back the 10 with a shrug. I told him I'd drop the other 4 Euros by later.
Then hand shakes and "Merci's" to him and off we went to the pharmacy around the corner to get the new prescriptions filled. What an easy process this was and a very necessary one as well.
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I watched "Cloverfield" the newish movie about a monster tearing apart NY City and scaring the holy-be-jezus outa lots of people running in the streets and metro. I found it interesting in the first 10 minutes, never thrilling and even less scary. In fact it was tedious, all the jerky camera motions, inadequate character development, under-seen monster led me to not give a shit whether anyone survived. Who cares? Give it up! Some psycho-thriller. Oh well...Hollywood.