Allison in French Medical System Land

First of all, I apologize for my infrequent posting as of late.  Mostly this has been due to a cluster-f of work and school, but also because much of my non school/work life is taken up with baby stuff.  And, as there is certainly no shortage of mommy and pregnancy blogs (written by women much wittier than I), I am struggling to find suitable Frenchy French adventures to relate to that don't involve le croissant dans le four.  And so while I don't want to begin inundating you with baby-related musings, this whole being knocked-up abroad thing has given me new insights into some particular aspects of life in France that were previously unknown to me.  Chief among these is an up-close view of the mysterious creature that is the French medical system. While there are several episodes to choose from (I may someday have to tell you about my first ultrasound, aka The Time I Encountered the Dildo Camera of Doom), most telling is perhaps the beginning of this whole bebe saga (well, not the actual beginning.  I'm guessing you know how that works.  If not, ask your mother).

We travel way back to the chilly, desolate Parisian days of January 2012 (for a refresher, check out "Pack Up the Wine, Break Out the Vodka."  Really, just looking at the picture will suffice).  Despite three negative home pregnancy tests, my lady-time remained on extended holiday, and thus I found myself making my first doctor's appointment in France with a GP I found through a list recommending English-speaking doctors in my area.  Except that this is France, and so of course I arrive at this woman's office to find that she has gone on vacation and that her substitute speaks nary a word of anglais.  Now, there are plenty of situations that I have become comfortable fumbling my way through with my limited French.  Most of these situations involve food, and the most dire consequence of a misunderstanding is that my steak comes under-cooked.  But figuring out whether or not there is another life form taking up residence in your body is not a situation where you want to be missing out on nuance.  

Somehow, we managed to communicate enough that I found myself up on her table as she poked around on my uterus.  She shrugged, and told me that yes, despite the negative pregnancy tests, I was probably with child.  Before I knew it she was sitting down and writing up prescriptions for me to take to the blood lab.  In addition to testing whether or not there was a friendly parasite in my uterus, I also needed to test whether or not I had toxoplasmos, aka Cat Piss Disease.  Apparently cats here can carry this virus that, while only a minor annoyance to a healthy adult, is quite problematic for in-utero persons.  Thus, not yet even certain I was with child, I found myself with quite the list of what I could and could not be consuming (goodbye, brie!  Goodbye, wine!  Goodbye, raw vegetables, sushi, and steak tartar!), along with directions to the nearest blood lab.

Oh yes, that's right.  Getting medical care in France is never a one-stop shopping experience.  Just as running errand involves trips to several different tiny shops (sometimes involving metro transfers) rather than one quick in-and-out to Target, going to the doctor means that you'll probably be sent to a lab or a specialist somewhere else, too.  And so off to the blood lab I went, managed to communicate what I needed, got stuck with a needle and sent home with instructions to return the next day.  Because, oh yes, that is the other fun thing about French medical care.  Test results are not sent to your doctor, you pick them up directly.

Which leads to the next part of this adventure: me, anxious as all hell, returning at 5:30 on the dot the next day to get my results.  Now, I'm not sure what I was expecting: that "FELICITATIONS!!!!!" would be written in all caps across the top?  That confetti would fall out?  That it would be like one of those expensive singing cards at hallmark?  A laser light show?  Regardless, I was (perhaps foolishly) unprepared to be faced with several pages of medicalese (hormone levels, etc.), all in French, naturally. After several weeks of being on edge, it was the equivalent of getting to the end of a 500 page novel only to find out that "it was all a dream."  I was displeased.

On my way home I sat down in my beautiful Parc Montsouris, pouring over the results, trying to make some sense of it.  Which is, of course, the exact moment that the cranky park police (seriously, French equivalent of mall cops: douchebags with power issues who have been given whistles and a modicum of control over other people) decided to start blowing their whistles to let everyone know that it was time to go home.  One particular douchebag avec whistle decided that I wasn't moving fast enough, and thus decided to walk directly up to me and blow his whistle in my face.

Me: I KNOW, I KNOW.
DBaW: (in snooty French accent, natch) Well, if YOU KNOW, then MOVE.

Curled up in my room, panicking on the phone to AH, I could not see how this would end well.  If I wasn't pregnant, then I had not been visited by Aunt Flo for an awfully long time with no other medical explanation offered.  But if I was...if I was, I did not see how this could possibly be an auspicious beginning.  I've always loved babies and children, and I've been pretty certain that I'd be sort of ok at the whole motherhood thing, but damn, if I was pregnant then this was my first test of motherhood, and I was failing miserably.  If just finding out whether or not I was having a baby was this complicated, and I found myself this unequal to the challenge, how would I possibly cope with the challenges of having a baby that would eventually be more than an apple pip in my stomach- how would I handle a living, breathing human being totally dependent upon me and my competence level at surviving in the world?

And then I noticed three little letters, halfway down the second page: HCG.  I had seen those before; they were printed on the home pregnancy test boxes that were still in my recycling bin.  And there was a number next to them.  A relatively small number, but a number that meant that it was no fluke: I was going to have a baby.  And then everything slowed down just a little bit...