After three years since I last saw a doctor, this morning I woke up with vertigo.
I tried not to have to go, but with our impending trip to Italy next week, I thought I should get checked out. After all, if I see the leaning tower of Pisa and it isn’t leaning, or I’m leaning more than it, I might feel cheated.
So Jon bundled me in the car to the local GPs house.
It’s like going back many years in the UK. You wander into what appears to be someone’s house (and actually, it is) and take a seat, having of course exchanged ‘bonjours’ with anyone else who happens to be in there. Eventually it will be your turn.
Monsieur le docteur, wearing jeans and looking like an ex-rugby prop, greets you at his door, shakes hands and leads you in to his surgery which is the untidiest room I have seen since our girls grew up and left home.
After a few preliminaries, filling in a form to register, I explained what was wrong and he led me to his examination room which, although cluttered, was a little tidier. He checked my blood pressure which was deemed to be OK then checked my eyes. He then grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me onto the couch.
‘It’s a good job Jon is just the other side of that partition wall’, I thought, wondering if this was normal practice for a French GP.
Monsieur le docteur sat me up again and looked carefully at my eyes. After a while the room stopped spinning. He then explained that he was going to do the same thing but turning my head to the side this time. I braced myself and ooooh, off the world went again, leaving me behind. He then went back into his surgery telling me to follow when the world was back to normal again.
He then relieved me of 22 Euros and sent me to the pharmacy with my prescription.
The pharmacy then relieved me of a further 26 Euros and gave me three different types of pill. I suppose the theory is that one of them will stop the giddiness eventually.
Now we need to work out how to get our money back from the French health service and our insurers.
Meanwhile, if you hear a strange rattling noise next week anywhere between here and Italy, it’s probably me having taken all those pills.