house call

So yesterday, the doctor came to our house (they make house calls in Italy - a big perk). She was French, recommended by the embassy. I was (and still am) afflicted with a sore throat that could cut an ice sculpture, trembling, feverish, and my left ear really hurt.

She didn't bring her bag of instruments with her. Said it would have taken too long to get here. So she didn't have her otoscope or thermometer. She felt my forehead.

"At least 38 degrees," she said. Then she looked down my throat.

"Very red. Definitely a throat infection."

She did have her stethoscope, and she placed it at various points on my back to listen for inner murmerings. She didn't hear anything bad but I guess she was impressed by the view of my spine because when she was done listening, her only comment was,

"You are too thin. How much do you weigh?"

This is the second French doctor to make this remark to me (both women, I might add). I swear, they are obsessed with weight.

"Er, in France, I weighed 57 kg. Here, I am closer to 55 kilo. Not that I have been on a diet. It just happened. Why, do you think low weight has caused my illness?"

"No. But you are nevertheless too thin. Look at me. I am the same height as you and I weigh 70 kilo!"

I looked at her. Her morphology was totally the opposite of mine - skinny legs, larger waist. No way I would ever look like that, no matter how much weight I put on.

"Yes, but this is just the way I am. Even if I gained ten more kilo, I would still be skinny up top," I replied.

"C'est pas vrai. [Basically her way of saying "Rubbish and you don't know what you are talking about"]. What do you eat for breakfast?" she asked. I then told her what I ate for breakfast. Then she wanted to know what I ate for lunch and supper and she proceeded to devise a calorie-rich meal plan for me. All this during a visit to look at my throat and ears.

Meanwhile, my body temperature was over 38°, I could feel myself sweating, pain seared down my throat every time I swallowed and I was wondering when she was going to get down to diagnosing what I had.

After spelling out a meal regime that had about three times the Frenchman's daily calorie intake, she wrote out the prescription for my throat. Now, back home in Canada, a prescription was a small piece of paper with one illegible word scribbled on it that you handed to the pharmacist. In return, you got a little brown bottle with exactly the number of pills that you were to take over the next few days. No more, no less.

In France and in Italy, prescriptions are a whole different ball game. You don't just get one medication. You get a whole laundry list of things that you are supposed to get from the pharmacy. AND, you get the whole box of each item, not just the number you have to take to get well. So I now have:

- Box of Cefixoral (the antibiotics)
- Bottle of FROBEN spray (to spray the back of my throat to numb it. Does not work as far as I can tell).
- Propolis spray (some kind of natural substance also to spray at the back of my throat, in the event that I really want to delay the antibiotics and try to get better without them. I tried it for two hours. Decided that I had suffered enough and took the antibiotics.)
- Acqua di Sirmione (Water that tastes and smells like sewage. I am not kidding. Apparently, it will keep my nose clear and ear tubes clear. Needless to say, I won't be going through one tube a day as prescribed.)

And I have enough Froben, Propolis and Acqua di Sirmione to last me through three or four more illnesses, at least. All paid for by insurance, of course.