A doctor's visit.

March 13, Saint-Ismier.

An asthma attack that I don't detect, until it is very late. One of my worst nightmares come true.
The kids and I have been sick almost continually since we've arrived here, but yesterday Dylan woke up coughing and went on coughing all day, until I finally woke up and ran to a doctor's office open on week ends (one we'd already visited.) A massive dose of steroids and an inhaler for an hour straight and when we drove home night had fallen for a long time already.
I didn't see it.
I should have known.
Last May's emergency room nightmare all over again.
And I can't shake the panick, the gripping pressure in the chest; the proximity of reliable, low-cost care doesn't seem to alleviate the fear. But it does help; nothing is worse than rushing your child to a health care facility you don't know, you don't know where, the only thing that you know being that it will cost you hundreds of dollars at a minimum (we were charged just under three thousand dollars for Dylan's five-hour ER visit at a hospital near Indianapolis last year.)
Yesterday the physician sent us home with antibiotics to clear the looming lung infection, but also a life changer for me: the knowledge that I can call her from anywhere, any time our time zones let us, and get help over the phone from someone I trust.
She also sent us home without making me pay, as we've agreed to go back on Thursday for a checkup before we head back to the U.S. How I'll miss the blessing that is the health care system in France: the double bill will be less than sixty dollars, and that only because I am not covered here, as I don't contribute to the health care system through taxes; otherwise it would have been free, as any other health care bill for my kids until they're eighteen.
All through those months of constant doctors' visits, each of them looked at me with alarm every time I announced that I wasn't covered, and each time too, when they told me how much the bill was, I wanted to laugh, although it would have been a bitter laugh. A family practice physician charges around twenty-six euros for a consultation, or about thirty-five dollars; no specialist has charged me more than fifty dollars.
No, physicians certainly don't get as rich here as they can in the U.S. They don't have huge student loans to pay back either, and no impossibly high insurance bill to pay to cover their back.
For the rest of us, what a difference.