PicoBlog

Now that I was back in a place of abundance and choice, where I could walk to do errands, I was in something like city-mind, and there was less time to brood. I felt sure now that I had passed out of the simpering, fate-cursing phase of life rebuilding. I was getting curious and outward-looking. I had functional internet. I was eating well. When I went on little short car rides to take walks in the woods, it wasn’t to cling to trees like a life raft anymore, but just to take a walk and have a chat and look at the leaves.

It was funny being in city-mind in such a small city as Saint-Jouin, though. Full rurality, at the mill house, had been a complete mind fuck. I did it on purpose, as a strength test to see if I could handle the country, its isolation, its wobbly tech, the fact that forests and fields would play as important a role in my life as people in my weird, new little drama. I’m not sure if I passed, and not sure what it would even mean to pass, since hindsight makes clear that I was going through a not-minor depressive episode, so nothing felt like a win.

Now in the Big Little City, my mind went back to more or less familiar ways of living. When I popped back to Paris a few times for interviews, it didn’t seem as foreign as it did the first time I went back after moving. But it did feel walled and a little hostile. Without my own home to go back to in between appointments, I depended on the kindness of friends, or the ex’s ex, for a place to crash if I needed to make it an overnight. It was tenuous. If you have to stay the night because you have some work dinner engagement, you end up treating your hosts like a free hotel, which is really rude. A few times here and there are acceptable but not much more.

The endless offer of Paris was brought into its sharpest relief around questions of health, because Le Perche is as dry a medical desert as you can imagine. For dentists, for any kind of specialist, including a gynecologist because the fact of being a woman with woman parts is “special,” I’d have to make the trek if I wanted to be sure I was getting the best provider, not just the only provider. It meant scheduling dentist appointments after lunch because of the train schedule. No matter how vigorously you brush your teeth after eating a hamburger at the Indiana on the Place Gambetta (don’t judge: you can get pickled jalapeños there), there will still be some leftover detritus in your mouth. My soft-spoken young lady dentist screamed at me the last time I went in for a cleaning when she found a stray sesame seed.

I have learned that being in your 50s means you need to start thinking seriously about proximity to doctors and hospitals. I was at least able to find a médecin généraliste, or primary care physician, in Le Perche, about 15 minutes from my future house. He was Dr. Malard, and the first time I went for an appointment, he seemed perfect.

His office was tucked away in a vine-covered brick building on a charming side street of a very pretty village with a good cheese shop for before or after doctor visits. The waiting area was bare bones like most French doctors, but in his consultation room, he had vintage anatomy posters like the type hipsters once acquired from the Parisian publisher Deyrolle. A bunch of cool-guy snapshots of Jean-Paul Belmondo in sports cars covered the wall nearest his desk. He wore Adidas Sambas and made jokes and asked no questions about my growing list of prescriptions, for allergies, for migraines, for insomnia, for anxiety. He’d compliment me on my excellent blood pressure every time he took it, and it wasn’t too hard to get an appointment for sleeping pill top-ups. Right on, Malard.

The next time I saw Samira and told her he was my GP, she made a face. “He’s really old school,” she said, and then started talking about a woman doctor who did homeopathy and energy work 35 minutes away, but she was probably not taking new patients. Nobody was except Malard, I told her.

I figured that by “old school,” Samira meant Malard was traditional French, so: into Western science but fine with the odd arnica or Vitamin D supplement, and very happy to hand out pills. Subsequent appointments eventually revealed that she meant something else.

Malard’s shortcomings first reared their head when I was reporting a story on menopause for Air Mail, which included testing out an American telehealth service. Whether through the power of suggestion or weird timing, I had a few really big mood swings and hot flashes right around when that phone appointment came due, so I was able to actually get some counseling. “I’d have to see your bloodwork but it sounds like, from what you’re telling me, a simple low-progestin pill and maybe some low-dosage estrogen cream should do it,” said the nurse practitioner over the phone. “This is super easy,” she added. “Just get a blood panel done, show it to your doctor and he should be able to sort you out.”

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So I went in to visit Malard to tell him what I needed. He made a face. “Madame, I do not know anything about menopause except that it means you are at the apogee of your femininity, and that is a beautiful thing.”

Wait I’m sorry, I thought I was consulting a medical specialist, not a low budget Victorian literary critic. Were we going to start talking about humors next? “Madame Marshall, I treat illnesses, and menopause is not an illness,” he continued. I told him to prescribe the bloodwork anyway, which he did while making a face. “It will be of no use to me,” he said, as if it was about him.

I went to the lab in Saint-Jouin to get the test done and as I was begging the young lab assistant taking my blood to be gentle with me, as I’m chickenshit around needles, my nervous prattly chatstream revealed that Malard was my doctor. “Have you heard of him?” I asked. She just rolled her eyes. I told her about the feminine apogee thing and she just laughed. “Do you know of any women doctors in the area who are taking on new patients?” I asked. Of course not.

Once the results were in hand, a week later, I went back to show them to Malard almost as a dare. He professed total ignorance in reading hormone panels, and said that anyway, wasn’t hormone replacement therapy cancerous? Now I was just annoyed. “You realize that study was done almost 20 years ago? You realize there has been a lot of work done on this subject since then? You realize this is a legitimate medical issue and you’re a doctor?” He just shrugged and said, “I know nothing about this. Come let’s take your blood pressure.” Fine, I’ll book a gynecologist in Paris, I told him in a huff. (She turned out to be great, I am happy to have her now, even if she’s inconvenient.)

The next time I went in to see Malard, he asked me my age again and told me we were going to have to find me a husband, because it would not to do have a pretty single woman running around here. “What use would I have for a husband?” I chortled, and rolled my eyes, because the appointment was almost over and better to just GTFO. But then the next time I went in, for a Covid boost, he started openly flirting with me. “Here, jump up on the table and remind me if you’re left or right handed.” Left, I told him, so he asked me to roll up my right sleeve. “And what a lovely right shoulder it is,” he said, almost caressing my skin before he jabbed in the needle and I yelped.

After I settled up, and walked back to my car, I sat behind the steering wheel for a good while, fuming. The greenmaket was going to have to wait. “This is a dominance response,” I said to myself. “This man is pissed because you questioned his authority over your own medical care, and he is handling that by humping your leg.”

I had two months til sleeping meds prescription would need to be topped up. It might take me that long to find somebody new in the area, but find them I would.

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