03 april 2008
I’ve been going to my doctor here for about a year now. Which means that for about a year now she’s been bugging me to go get my cholesterol/blood sugar/who-knows-what-else checked. Unlike doctor’s offices in the U.S., tests here are done at labs. Off site. You take your sample or your prescription and deal with it on your own. You also pick up your own results.
Anyway, last time I was in her office, I had to admit that I hadn’t done it because I’m scared of the whole blood test experience. So she wrote on the prescription that I need to have my blood drawn while lying down. She gave me that along with a prescription for a mammogram.
Today I finally got up the nerve to go. The cholesterol test requires fasting from dinner until you have the test done… which I remembered to do. You don’t need an appointment, so at least I didn’t have to call and try to do that on the phone.
I drove to the lab this morning and went in. I waited in line then without saying a word (since I didn’t know what word to say), I handed over my prescriptions. The woman behind the desk handed me back the mammogram one. Dang it, I’m going to have to figure out where to go for that. So she took the other, started typing into her computer. She asked me my birthday. Obviously, I know my birthday. But to think how to say it as one-thousand nine hundred sixty-seven creates a pause in my free-flowing (ahem) French conversation. I got about half of it out and the woman finished for me. (I’m already in their computer, she was just confirming she had the right person.) Then she told me to sit and wait.
I’d barely started flipping through the random French magazine in the waiting area when a woman came out and called my name. I got up and followed her into the little room that had a plaque with a needle on the door. She said something to me I didn’t understand and my anxiety level started to skyrocket. I asked her to speak more slowly, so instead she said in English you don’t like? No. I don’t like. I sat in the chair (no lying down option) and told her that she’d be better off going for the back of my hand than my arm. She said she’d look and decide. So she used a much-more friendly tourniquet than at home, asked me to squeeze my hand and that’s when I looked away. I was busy trying to make small talk in French about what a chicken I am when she announced she was done. Done? It worked? Yes… she held up two full vials of my blood as proof. (not necessary) I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never had blood drawn so effortlessly. I didn’t even have a chance to feel faint.
I’m supposed to go back tonight and pick up the results. Not that I’ll understand them. Then I have to try not to loose them before I manage to get into the doctor’s office… which I cannot do until I figure out the mammogram. I wonder how you say boob squeeze in French.
How delightful to have a medical experience go easier than you think it will. I’ve almost become okay with having blood drawn…..almost. Not that I have it done to pass the time. And perhaps the lab for the other test will have Al Jolsen music on hold, singing “Mammmy, mammmmy, Combien Je t’aime, Combien Je t’aime…..”