So this happened…
The morning we were due to leave France for the US and parts beyond, I had a mishap with a knife and some cheese. In my defence, it was a Tomme aux Fleurs; no one in their right mind would want to waste the tiniest bit. I took one look at my folly and said, yeah, a professional needs to eye that up. With surging adrenaline and feeling very stupid, I slapped a hat on my bed head, and went straight to ER. It was 7:30 am, our train to the airport was at 3. Not my most shining travel day moment.
I hopped on the tram and went to the spiffy new Urgences. A nurse cleaned the wound and said in her opinion, I would need stitches. We’d see what the doc thought, but I should know that they would send me to a specialty hospital if that were the case. Hands are tricky and delicate after all. Lots of moving parts. More surging adrenaline as I awaited the verdict. How long would that take? Would we make our train? I went into full damage control mode, assessing and mentally rearranging our travel plans, kicking myself all the while. But then I thought, travel planning is what I’m good at; foreseeing the future, not so much. Planning could wait. I could relax, even while not knowing. And that cleared some space for me to realize my great good fortune. I was surrounded by care. The fact that emergency rooms exist anywhere is a testament to caring, not to mention doctors and nurses. And I have the even greater good fortune to live in France, where access to healthcare is a human right. There is a net under you, under everyone. Mark once saw a beat-up looking homeless guy go into a pharmacy with a vicious cut on his hand and the pharmacist bandaged him up. No one is undeserving.
Living in that culture of care means my threshold for seeking medical attention is lower than it used to be. In the US, I would have thought long and hard about whether I needed to be seen by a doctor, and much more so about going to ER. I would have had to calculate where we were at as far as our deductions for the year. Given that this was January, I would have likely put on a big bandage and resigned myself to losing a chunk of flesh. In France, healthcare isn’t free, but it is sane. We pay a percentage of our taxable income (over a certain threshold) and then 70% of our healthcare is covered by the state. The remaining 30% is covered by a private top-up policy. All is insanely affordable, not to mention I will not have to fight the insurance company. I probably won’t even see the bill.
The doctor came in and said I needed one stitch, just a tack, and that he could do it there. The cut was deep, but there was no tendon or nerve damage. He told me to come back right away if I saw any sign of infection. I said I was leaving on a long trip, he said no problem, you can be seen anywhere. I said I was heading to the US. He said, ah, in that case, let me write you a prescription for an antibiotic, so you have it if need be. Everyone knows how it goes in the US.
I have lots of fears about travel (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), but none so acute as healthcare in the US. We have to buy a crappy travel policy when we’re there and I’m terrified of needing it. United Healthcare anyone? Enough said. It’s always a relief to leave for saner pastures.
My cut has now healed. We’re out of the clutches of the US and in Japan. And I’m noticing the even more exceptional culture of care here. I’ve not seen homeless people, no one is begging. The worst thing I’ve seen was a young man passed out drunk in a flower bed on a Sunday morning. He was on his back and I noticed his breathing was labored. Then I saw what looked like vomit around his mouth and thought he needed help, in case he was asphyxiating. I flagged down a young woman doing landscaping and my caveman Japanese was sufficient to convey my concern. She said she’d call an ambulance. What would I have done in the US? Calling an ambulance for someone drunk would be possibly condemning that someone to extreme medical debt. The worst that would happen here in Japan is that he’d be quite annoyed in addition to hung over.
The anthropologist Margaret Mead is said to have pinpointed the beginning of human civilisation with the first fossil record of a healed femur. That a broken leg wasn’t a death sentence as it might have once been marked the start of our humanity.
I’ll never know if I was a hero or a busybody that day and that’s ok. The culture of care allowed me to just be human.
Cheers, and take good care of yourselves!
Maer
The Let's Get Lost Game 