Medical Visits

Social medicine has its costs. One of these costs is time served at medical exams. In order to enter France and work, you have to go to the doctor.

If you are lucky, your company will work through an agency. This process is blissful compared to everything else. By far, the person helping me (and some of my other expat friends) is the complete opposite of stereotypical French bureaucracy. One considers a new name for any children to be.

The medical exam takes place in the morning. You go to a building in a Southern Paris suburb. Like any other doctor’s exam, first you wait. Then, they bring you into another room. Then, you wait. You chat with some other people you meet going through the same experience. The exam begins.

You start off with basic measurements – height, weight, age. If you are American or a member of certain other nationalities, you are done. If not, you have a urine test. If you are Russian, good luck.

Passing the American test, it is time for the chest x-ray. Why you must have a chest x-ray is beyond me. However, time to take off your shirt and get a healthy dose of gamma rays. Next is the doctor’s exam.

You wait until a doctor calls you into his office. He or she brings you in and asks you questions about your family history. I do not have my vaccine records as I am a very bad person. So, I tell the doctor what vaccines I have had. If you have gone to college in the US, chances are you are fine. You look at the chest x-ray. The doctor gives you the chest x-ray. In my case (not everyone had this experience), the doctor gives you a condom. The condom is for the prevention of STD’s, of course.

I’ll take that as a compliment.