Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

By far the most worrying aspect of coming to France for a year was the uncertainty around getting my health looked after. I was unable to get any straight answers from the UK authorities and French guidelines seemed clouded by M. Sarkozy’s political bluster.

In the end, my decision was to come here, tell the UK authorities that I wanted to transfer my health care cover to France and present myself to the French health care system and see what happened.

Yesterday I was guided through applying for a French health care card (Carte Vitale), registered with a general practitioner and arranged an appointment with a gastroenterologist.

Today I saw the gastroenterologist, had a very thorough 45 minute consultation and booked an appointment to receive my first Remicade infusion (it’s definitely Remicade rather than Infliximab here) on 14 August at the University Hospital.

So in just over 24 hours I have all the medical support that I had in the UK. It is so unfortunate that all the messages I got from the UK authorities suggested the process would be difficult and “may take months”.

Had the process actually taken months there would be no way someone like me, with ‘severe’ Crohn’s, could even think of living in another EU country – unless some insurance company could be found to provide cover and then a premium of perhaps £10,000 or more could by paid.

There may, of course, still be hiccups with the Carte Vitale. I shall find out on Thursday. However, I get the impression that the civil servant we saw on Monday will help me through the process because he understood the important of me receiving the health care I need in order for me to live as healthy and fulfilling life as possible.

Perhaps it is something about the French ideals of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité that filter through the French state and give me a sense of having been treated as a human being. Yes, there are also mountains of paperwork and a different type of bureaucracy to understand and navigate through, but I really don’t mind that.

I am going to write up exactly how I have negotiated this forbidding hurdle and post it somewhere on this site – maybe it will help other people who want to try something similar to this year in France but are put off by scaremongering.

One final thing. When I asked the gastroenterologist what I should do if I needed urgent medical attention, he said I should get to the 24 hour emergency department at the clinic and the staff would call him. He said he lived very close and it should only take him a few minutes, a little longer if it was at night and he was asleep.