Let’s talk about getting medications in France.

Prior to moving over here, we both made sure that our US doctor had loaded us up with our meds. Our hope was to not need to visit a doctor for a while.

Apparently, I was the only one to do that…

While we were at our second rental about 45 days after our arrival, D told me she needed refills on her meds. She called her doctor who agreed to send the prescriptions via fax to her.

Now it was time to pick a local pharmacy near where we were staying in Charente Maritime. Then she was going to have to find a way to ask them to fill her prescriptions.

At this point, let me fill you in a little bit about D. She works a lot more than I do. Consequently, I have been the one out driving around France, hunting and gathering the food and anything else we need. So, let’s say, her ability to communicate with the French needed some work. Recently, over a year since we moved here, this reared its head. We were meeting someone selling an armoire via the internet. When we got to their house, we exchanged our bonjours an D said to the women “je ne pas parlez vous Francaise”.

We pulled up to the large French style department store mall that housed the pharmacy she selected. As we pulled into our parking spot, with Sully hanging out in the back of the car, I asked her if she wanted me to go in with her. It was pretty warm outside, so we couldn’t leave him in the car and we weren’t sure if we could bring him in with us anyway. So that left it up to her or me. It was going to be bad enough trying to get the job done. Let alone, me trying to explain why I was trying to get a prescription filled for estrogen. So I asked her "do you want to go in and get the prescriptions?"

She said, “I got this man!”

Off she went on her adventure.

As she nervously entered the pharmacy, there was a line of 3 or 4 people ahead of her. Just enough to give her time to watch the locals interacting in French with helpers at the counter. More importantly, it gave her more time to get nervous. There is an interesting ratio if you don’t speak the local language, the longer you wait in a line and prepare what you are going to say to order something, the higher the likelihood of you messing up what you wanted to say. Speaking from experience, this is a truism. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. As soon as the counter person says something to you, the brain shuts off. Even if it doesn’t, if they don’t understand what you are trying to say to them, the confusion only gets worse. Then you just start pointing at things you want like you were a caveman.

After a few minutes it was her turn to speak to the women at the counter. Disaster. Just showing her the printed prescription wasn’t enough to get the job done. Something had to happen. Suddenly, and thankfully, two spots behind in the line, someone who spoke English saw what was going on. She stepped up to the counter and told the women that D needed to have a prescription filled. That was all that was needed. She was told to have her doctor send an email for what they wanted for her.

The next day the doctor confirmed that they had sent the medication request. Back we went to the pharmacy.

D jumped out of the car as soon as we got there.  After a while she came back and ripped the door open. “Guess what?” she excitedly yelled. “What?” I asked, “guess how much they charged me for my medications”. I had know idea and asked her to tell me.

“Well, back in the states I generally paid between $150 and $175 per month for these 3 medications, with insurance. Here they gave me a 3 month supply for all three for guess how much?” I still had no idea, and I wasn’t sure if it was going to be good or bad since we had no insurance.

“Twenty eight euros she shouted!” “What, holy crap!” I love this place.