Going to the Pharmacist

Pharmacies in France work a bit like going to a general practitioner: you can go into one, tell them your ailments, and they give you medicine. There are plenty of medicines they can't give you without a prescription...but it can save you a good bit of money to go to them first to find out whether you need to go to the doctor.

My eye has been bothering me for a day or two, and today I finally saw in it what I'd expected: a stye. I've had them before, and I usually put a warmed teabag on it several times throughout the day until it goes away. (I read somewhere online that there's something healthy in the tea leaves that helps heal the stye.) This time, I decided to go see if the pharmacist had some handy-dandy drop I could use instead.

First, however, I would need to find the word for 'stye.' "That's easy," you think to yourself. "You just look up 'stye' in your dictionary and voila! You know the word." Not so fast, smarty pants. (Master Yoda, I'm looking at you.)

I did that, and both wordreference and Google Translate both gave me two words for the one word 'stye': orgelet and porcherie. In that second word, however, is the root word for 'pig,' (porc), and I suddenly realized: eek! Pig stye! I don't want to walk into the pharmacist and tell them, "I have a pig stye in my eye." Might be funny because of the rhyme in English (and the sense), but in French, eegads. That's a quick route to a culture shock moment in the pharmacy right there.

I looked up "orgelet" in Google images and sure enough it's the right word. A little shy, I walked up to the pharmacist and said, "I have an, um, orgelet in my eye. Is there a medicine I can put on it?" She nodded and explained that they have some drops they could give me, but if it didn't get better I'll need to go to the doctor.

She apparently didn't know about the tea bag trick. She also didn't appear to realize that her understanding my question, answering it, and treating me like I was 100% normal, (instead of the "oh no, a foreigner with a charming yet incomprehensible accent" attitude), without even batting an eye helped me take another step towards feeling adjusted here.

I got my drops and felt proud of learning a new word and side-stepping a culture shock moment in the pharmacy. We'll see if the drops work better than the tea bag.

Achoo! Achoo!

I went to the pharmacist to pick up my new (detestable) medication. I handed the prescription paper to the pharmacist, and he looks at it.

"You sure you have to take this?"

"Yes."

He doesn't move, doesn't say anything. 30 seconds later...

"Are you absolutely sure?"

Oh, the sarcasm that begun swirling in my head. It's not like I walked up the ice cream man and was deciding from 31 flavors. It's a prescription from a doctor on an official piece of paper, with a validation stamp to boot. It's not my choice.

"Yes, I'm sure. The doctor prescribed it."

"I'm sorry." I thought, yeah, I am too!

So while he's working on filling it, what do I do? I sneeze.

(All of you who know me understand that. For the rest of you...sorry. It's just something you have to hear in person. But for my entire life, if someone was around when I've sneezed, someone has commented when I've sneezed).

Pharmacists in countries other than the US are sort of like general practioners: for simple ailments like the flu or a cough, you go to the pharmacist, and they give you the medicine you need. It's actually kind of cool. So when I sneeze, he looks at me sort of oddly.

"You want something for that?"

"No thanks." Then, on cue, I sneeze again (I never sneeze just once).

"Really, I have something you can take for that. Just one pill a day, fix it all up." He sort of waves at his nose. "No more that sneezing."

Buddy, if you'd been around my whole life, you'd know--I'm sort of proud of "that sneezing." It makes me ME. It's not like I have a cold, or congestion, or allergies, or anything. I just sneeze. It's my thing. Please don't give me a drug to make it go away!

He looked at me like I was crazy to want the prescription I'd been told by my doctor to take, but not the non-sneezing stuff that he thought I should take. Hmmm...follow doctor's orders or rid myself of my trademark?

I know, I know. All of you who haven't heard the blessed sound in the last 14 months miss me so much more now. I'm sorry to have deprived you of the sneeze. But no worries. I didn't take the pharmacist's drug. Sneeze is still being enjoyed by people in this part of the world.