A while ago, Paul Hipp, a friend from across the big pond wrote a satirical song about the world healthcare rankings and America's position therein (No. 37).
Check it out HERE
From this I learned that Britain is ranked #18 and FRANCE is ranked #1. Not sure that in this post-Bush era this still stands but I'm certainly getting a huge amount of attention from the healthcare professionals here.
THE PARTIALLY DIABETIC
There's a routine test over here where you go in starving, they take some blood, give you a glass of glucose-laden, radio-active poison then make you wait an hour on the hardest chairs outside of a monastery. Then they take more blood, make you wait ANOTHER hour, take yet MORE blood before releasing you into the autumnal morning; cold and nauseous, with a very sore arse.
On one of the tests, I'm .4 of a gram over what they expect so immediately I'm packed off to Diabetic School with the unhealthy and the clinically obese, where I'm given lectures on how to eat and exercise properly. The only thing that prevents me from chewing my own arm off is the fact that it is all in French. Big thanks to the Tall One for sitting through it with me and giving a convincing impression of someone who is at least half awake.
They prescribe me an apparatus for testing my blood, and I am yet to see a result that is even vaguely worrying. It's not like the British Justice system. I am diabetic until proven innocent.
THE BAD
The same SAGE FEMME (midwife) who packs me off to Diabtetic School for .4 of a gram also tuts and huffs about my baby being small. BAD lady. He's NOT small. He's fine.
THE GOOD
Madame Huffy-Tutty Pants books me in for more echograhie (scans) and gives me a prescription for a private midwife to visit me CHEZ MOI twice a week. This is amazing on so many levels.
i) Someone is paid to spend up to 2 hours per week with me obsessing about my baby.
ii) We listen to his heart for a full 30 minutes at a time. I even get a print-out.
iii) I don't have to travel to Limoges for the privilege.
iv) As my attestation for my Carte Vitale has come through, I don't have to pay a thing. €90 per visit. Woo hoo!
v) The Tall One found me a midwife who not only speaks a bit of English, but also trained in the UK and KNOWS THE NHS SYSTEM. Together we deduce that the reason Mme HTP thinks he is small is because they have my dates out by at least a week. The French count the start of your pregnancy from conception. The English from the first day of your last period. 2 weeks difference.
vi) This fabulous lady is also my personal admin terrier. It transpires that even though my attestation has come through, because I don't have a piece of paper confirming my pregnancy from CPAM I'm not officially pregnant. She is on the phone to them, sorting out their bureaucratic asses.
So there you have it. Whether I am diabetic or not, whether or not he is small (he's bloody not), the good far outweighs the bad. Hurrah for France. Number 1 healthcare system in the world.
Showing posts with label declaration de grosesse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label declaration de grosesse. Show all posts
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Friday, 18 November 2011
J'habite en France
It's official. I'm here.
I am now a true resident of the commune of St Germain les Belles in the Haute Vienne. There's no going back. Actually, that's patently untrue, of course I could go back, but why would I want to?
THINGS THAT ARE BRILLIANT ABOUT LIVING IN FRANCE:
Everyone speaks French. Don't talk to me about cleaning women, talk to me about femmes de menage. Pass me that rag please? Mais non, passez-moi ce chiffon. Of course, it's not all bon appetit and merci à vous, there are times when I cry with frustration, particularly on the telephone.
My Little House. I'm still 'indoor camping' but it feels like home. Paul came and fitted my wood-burning stove this morning and is returning on Monday to do the radiators. Furthermore, he and Nikki have got a new cuisinière and are giving me their old cooker. I will have 4 rings and an oven! I've scraped nearly a third of the lino glue off the wooden floor boards downstairs. I'm about to splash white emulsion everywhere to brighten it up. Please note: I am not decorating as such. There will be no prep and I will be painting over all manner of ghastliness in terms of flaky paint and holes in the plaster, but I have ceased kidding myself that I'm going to be ready to decorate this side of next Christmas so expediency is the name of the game.
Proximity of The Tall One. Whether or not the tile section of Castorama was to blame for my gravid state, we are both incredibly excited by the mingling of our genes in a whole new person and not being able to share that except telephonically has been torture. Not to mention expensive. And anyway, baby aside, I missed HIM. Now I can listen to his disembodied voice on the phone knowing that a) it's not costing the earth and b) I'll see him in person that evening.
Mushrooms. I'm sure they have them in the countryside in England but I have never managed to actually live in the countryside since I was old enough to relish fungi for anything other than their psychotropic qualities. Today I found a huge haul of shaggy parasols. Yum. Guess what we're having for supper?
I could go on, and I probably will, in another post. Just to balance the picture, here is a taste of the more challenging aspects of living in a foreign country.
THINGS THAT MAKE ME WANT TO CRY/SHOUT/THROW STUFF
The paperwork. It's insane. Declarations and attestations are required for pretty much everything. I'm currently wading through the paperwork you need to have a baby. I'm not allowed to go into labour until I have successfully negotiated the following:
i) A carte vitale. Essential for accessing free maternity care
ii) Declaration de grosesse. This little form seems innocuous enough until you send the copies off to the relevant departments (CPAM, CAF) and then, like a bureaucratic Lernaean Hydra, it generates more and more forms and demands for documentation that all have to be dispatched separately. My only consolation is that once completed, this mountain of paperwork may actually yield some benefits. Remember those? We used to have them in the UK once upon a time...
iii) Declaration of Paternity. When I saw the midwife at the appropriately named Mother and Baby Hospital, after she'd finished berating me for my lack of paperwork, she told me that until we'd signed a declaration at the Mairie, the baby is, until the divorce is finalised, considered to be the offspring of my dear ex-husband. Bizarre, non?
Luckily, the French calculate full term pregnancy at 42 weeks rather than 41 weeks. The rate I'm going, I'm going to need that extra week.
Did I mention that everyone speaks French? Yes, the charm of communicating in a foreign language can also be a curse. Especially on the telephone. Or if you need to get something done quickly.
Fortunately, part of The Tall One's business is looking after helpless foreigners who haven't a clue. Van Den Berg Immobilier will not only sell you a lovely property, they also have people to support you whilst you take your first baby steps on this alien French-speaking planet. I of course, being stubborn and a bit of a masochist prefer to wrangle with it myself and weep buckets to baffled and incomprehensible bureaucrats on the phone for hours first, but it's good to know I'm not alone.
I am now a true resident of the commune of St Germain les Belles in the Haute Vienne. There's no going back. Actually, that's patently untrue, of course I could go back, but why would I want to?
THINGS THAT ARE BRILLIANT ABOUT LIVING IN FRANCE:
Everyone speaks French. Don't talk to me about cleaning women, talk to me about femmes de menage. Pass me that rag please? Mais non, passez-moi ce chiffon. Of course, it's not all bon appetit and merci à vous, there are times when I cry with frustration, particularly on the telephone.
My Little House. I'm still 'indoor camping' but it feels like home. Paul came and fitted my wood-burning stove this morning and is returning on Monday to do the radiators. Furthermore, he and Nikki have got a new cuisinière and are giving me their old cooker. I will have 4 rings and an oven! I've scraped nearly a third of the lino glue off the wooden floor boards downstairs. I'm about to splash white emulsion everywhere to brighten it up. Please note: I am not decorating as such. There will be no prep and I will be painting over all manner of ghastliness in terms of flaky paint and holes in the plaster, but I have ceased kidding myself that I'm going to be ready to decorate this side of next Christmas so expediency is the name of the game.
Proximity of The Tall One. Whether or not the tile section of Castorama was to blame for my gravid state, we are both incredibly excited by the mingling of our genes in a whole new person and not being able to share that except telephonically has been torture. Not to mention expensive. And anyway, baby aside, I missed HIM. Now I can listen to his disembodied voice on the phone knowing that a) it's not costing the earth and b) I'll see him in person that evening.
Mushrooms. I'm sure they have them in the countryside in England but I have never managed to actually live in the countryside since I was old enough to relish fungi for anything other than their psychotropic qualities. Today I found a huge haul of shaggy parasols. Yum. Guess what we're having for supper?
I could go on, and I probably will, in another post. Just to balance the picture, here is a taste of the more challenging aspects of living in a foreign country.
THINGS THAT MAKE ME WANT TO CRY/SHOUT/THROW STUFF
The paperwork. It's insane. Declarations and attestations are required for pretty much everything. I'm currently wading through the paperwork you need to have a baby. I'm not allowed to go into labour until I have successfully negotiated the following:
i) A carte vitale. Essential for accessing free maternity care
ii) Declaration de grosesse. This little form seems innocuous enough until you send the copies off to the relevant departments (CPAM, CAF) and then, like a bureaucratic Lernaean Hydra, it generates more and more forms and demands for documentation that all have to be dispatched separately. My only consolation is that once completed, this mountain of paperwork may actually yield some benefits. Remember those? We used to have them in the UK once upon a time...
iii) Declaration of Paternity. When I saw the midwife at the appropriately named Mother and Baby Hospital, after she'd finished berating me for my lack of paperwork, she told me that until we'd signed a declaration at the Mairie, the baby is, until the divorce is finalised, considered to be the offspring of my dear ex-husband. Bizarre, non?
Luckily, the French calculate full term pregnancy at 42 weeks rather than 41 weeks. The rate I'm going, I'm going to need that extra week.
Did I mention that everyone speaks French? Yes, the charm of communicating in a foreign language can also be a curse. Especially on the telephone. Or if you need to get something done quickly.
Fortunately, part of The Tall One's business is looking after helpless foreigners who haven't a clue. Van Den Berg Immobilier will not only sell you a lovely property, they also have people to support you whilst you take your first baby steps on this alien French-speaking planet. I of course, being stubborn and a bit of a masochist prefer to wrangle with it myself and weep buckets to baffled and incomprehensible bureaucrats on the phone for hours first, but it's good to know I'm not alone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
