My greatest accomplishment this past week was in yet again navigating through French bureaucracy – this time in the medical system. Upon arriving back to Aix after winter break, I received a very exciting letter informing me that I had qualified for a medical program called the ALD (atteint de longue durée). Basically because I have a long-term illness that I didn’t ask for, the French government has agreed to pay all my expenses that pertain to this illness. It almost seemed too good to be true.
I called the doctor the following day and managed to get an appointment for the very next morning. There was no waiting in the waiting room, and the doctor sat me down and said, “Raconte-moi.” – basically ‘tell me everything.’ So there I was totally unprepared to spout out my long medical history in English much less in French, but he patiently listened and took notes, helping me along with the vocabulary I didn’t know. You don’t exactly learn how to say autoimmune and kidney stone in foreign language classes. In the end, he wrote me a prescription for my medication that I subsequently took to a pharmacy (there are SO many in France). The pharmacist didn’t even bat an eye as she handed me a months worth of medication that would have cost me 2 months worth of my salary.
While I felt like an immigrant more than ever while trying to wade through the paperwork and the process of everything, I couldn’t believe how easy it all was. I love how so often seemingly huge problems get solved in the most unimaginable ways.
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