“I wanted to discuss…well you see, I was thinking maybe…,” I began, cursing how ill-adapted my colloquial French is to more formal situations, such as pap smears.
Docteur Le Foulard watched me, expectantly.
“The thing is, you see, I’m thinking of perhaps having a third child.”
Docteur Le Foulard frowned slightly.
I panicked. Had I addressed him with “tu” instead of “vous” by mistake? I had been known to do this before in formal situations and there was nothing that threw off the French quite like it; I did not want to throw off the man who would soon be giving me an internal.
“Et alors?” He prompted.
“Well. For one thing, I’m 34 and I’ll be 35 in October. Is that too old?”
He didn’t smile exactly, but his ice blue eyes crinkled un petit peu. “Thirty-five hardly makes one a biblical figure.”
I contemplated this nugget of wisdom for a time. “So it’s not too old?” I said, just to get things straight.
“Non.”
All this time Franck had been sitting patiently in a matching rattan chair beside me, clearly trying to figure out a way to charm the gynecologist into being a bit less aloof.
“She’s had two Casearians,” Franck offered. I was dismayed to realize that my husband, a man who on an off day could charm a Bedouin into buying sand, seemed to be at an utter loss with Docteur Le Foulard.
Docteur Le Foulard seemed a teeny fraction more interested. “And why was that?”
"My first daughter was set to come out feet first," I explained with a laugh at the crap-shoot that is childbirth. “And my second one horizontally.”
“Ah,” was all he said, looking about as amused as an existentialist, and let out a tragic sigh.
I tried to decipher whether the sigh meant that he found these particularly good reasons to have a caesarian, or particularly bad reasons, or whether he was simply contemplating the foie gras his wife was going to serve for dinner. Before I had the chance to draw any conclusions he waved me imperiously towards a little room off his examining room and requested that I undress - using the “vous” form, of course.
Barrel through, Laura, I chanted to myself. Just barrel through...
To be continued...
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Le Foulard - Part II
The urge to bolt was overwhelming, but I reminded myself that I had chosen Docteur Le Foulard for a reason. As a veteran of two C-sections, I was aware that any hypothetical third baby would be requiring the assistance of a surgeon to get out of my body.
The pickings in such a small town were slim, and Docteur Le Foulard was reputed to be the most experienced and fine-fingered surgeon in Beaune, not to mention a veteran of who knows how many thousand C-sections. I cannot stress how important this seems when toying with the prospect of having someone slice open your abdomen.
Besides, I tried to rationalize, for all I knew maybe a foulard was de rigueur for all French gynecologists.
I was hit by an acute longing for my doctor back in Canada. She was a no-nonsense mother of four boys who breezed into the examining room on the day of my yearly physical with the same demeanor that she no doubt refined over years of sewing back on her sons’ fingers after experiments with the lawnmower had gone awry.
“Lucky you! Time for every woman’s favorite day of the year!” she would sing, scanning my chart while selecting a speculum.
Her brisk multi-tasking diverted my attention from the fact that I was lying on an exam table wrapped only in a paper sheet. I was pretty sure a man who wore a silk neck scarf wouldn’t possess the same edifying maternal attitude.
When Docteur le Foulard called my name Franck also stood up. He had some questions too, notably will you please talk my wife out of this crazy idea of having a third child?
Docteur Le Foulard eyed him warily. I realized belatedly that maybe French men didn't generally accompany their wives to gynecological appointments. However, in light of the neck scarf I wasn’t going to back down; I needed Franck for moral support.
We were ushered into a stylish office with rattan chairs and an immaculate glass desk behind which Docteur Le Foulard lowered himself. He eyed us down aquiline nose attached to a head that would have undoubtedly been lopped off by a guillotine if he had lived during the Revolution.
“And what can I do pour vous Madame Germain?”
The formal “vous” form is, of course, the way doctors and patients address each other here in France. This is a stark contrast to the relative informality of Canadian doctors which allows me to float through medical exams deluding myself that it is just a unique form of coffee klatch.
Docteur Le Foulard’s stringent manners, compounded with the neck scarf, just drove home the point that even if I stretched my imagination to its absolute limit there was no way I could delude myself; a complete stranger would soon be seeing me completely naked.
To be continued...
The pickings in such a small town were slim, and Docteur Le Foulard was reputed to be the most experienced and fine-fingered surgeon in Beaune, not to mention a veteran of who knows how many thousand C-sections. I cannot stress how important this seems when toying with the prospect of having someone slice open your abdomen.
Besides, I tried to rationalize, for all I knew maybe a foulard was de rigueur for all French gynecologists.
I was hit by an acute longing for my doctor back in Canada. She was a no-nonsense mother of four boys who breezed into the examining room on the day of my yearly physical with the same demeanor that she no doubt refined over years of sewing back on her sons’ fingers after experiments with the lawnmower had gone awry.
“Lucky you! Time for every woman’s favorite day of the year!” she would sing, scanning my chart while selecting a speculum.
Her brisk multi-tasking diverted my attention from the fact that I was lying on an exam table wrapped only in a paper sheet. I was pretty sure a man who wore a silk neck scarf wouldn’t possess the same edifying maternal attitude.
When Docteur le Foulard called my name Franck also stood up. He had some questions too, notably will you please talk my wife out of this crazy idea of having a third child?
Docteur Le Foulard eyed him warily. I realized belatedly that maybe French men didn't generally accompany their wives to gynecological appointments. However, in light of the neck scarf I wasn’t going to back down; I needed Franck for moral support.
We were ushered into a stylish office with rattan chairs and an immaculate glass desk behind which Docteur Le Foulard lowered himself. He eyed us down aquiline nose attached to a head that would have undoubtedly been lopped off by a guillotine if he had lived during the Revolution.
“And what can I do pour vous Madame Germain?”
The formal “vous” form is, of course, the way doctors and patients address each other here in France. This is a stark contrast to the relative informality of Canadian doctors which allows me to float through medical exams deluding myself that it is just a unique form of coffee klatch.
Docteur Le Foulard’s stringent manners, compounded with the neck scarf, just drove home the point that even if I stretched my imagination to its absolute limit there was no way I could delude myself; a complete stranger would soon be seeing me completely naked.
To be continued...
Le Foulard - Part I
Of all the things putting me off the idea of getting pregnant, I never would have imagined a silk foulard would be among them.
Like most women, my annual gynecological exam is not a cause for celebration. I have an irksome tendency to get pathologically anxious in medical situations, and being mostly naked doesn’t exactly alleviate the problem.
I had also been informed by my French girlfriends that the gynecologist I was about to see was an aristocrat of sorts; the proof was in his last name which began with the prefix “Le”. I was determined, nevertheless, not to let this add to my stress level. This was post-Revolutionary France, after all, and we were all children of Rebublic. Liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that. Besides, I reasoned, he may be one of those fun, quirky, down-to-earth types of aristocrat.
As I sat beside Franck in the waiting room mindlessly thumbing through an issue of Paris Match, it dawned on me that being in France added a hitherto unexplored dimension of stress to a gynecological appointment. Over the years in Canada I had become familiar with the standard procedure. Here in France I had no idea what to expect. I'm not the kind of person who particularly likes having no idea what to expect, especially when again, the chances of me being naked when the unexpected occurred were unarguably on the high side.
Erratic heartbeat. Check. Burning crimson patches on face. Check. Blood pulsing behind eyeballs…wait a second, that was an entirely new symptom of extreme anxiety to add to my repertoire...I was firmly in a state where the slightest little thing could put me off. So when my French gynecologist glided out of his office wearing a foulard artfully tied around his neck, I felt like I had been jammed with an electric cattle prod.
Dorothy, I said to myself, you’re not in Kansas anymore.
Like most women, my annual gynecological exam is not a cause for celebration. I have an irksome tendency to get pathologically anxious in medical situations, and being mostly naked doesn’t exactly alleviate the problem.
I had also been informed by my French girlfriends that the gynecologist I was about to see was an aristocrat of sorts; the proof was in his last name which began with the prefix “Le”. I was determined, nevertheless, not to let this add to my stress level. This was post-Revolutionary France, after all, and we were all children of Rebublic. Liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that. Besides, I reasoned, he may be one of those fun, quirky, down-to-earth types of aristocrat.
As I sat beside Franck in the waiting room mindlessly thumbing through an issue of Paris Match, it dawned on me that being in France added a hitherto unexplored dimension of stress to a gynecological appointment. Over the years in Canada I had become familiar with the standard procedure. Here in France I had no idea what to expect. I'm not the kind of person who particularly likes having no idea what to expect, especially when again, the chances of me being naked when the unexpected occurred were unarguably on the high side.
Erratic heartbeat. Check. Burning crimson patches on face. Check. Blood pulsing behind eyeballs…wait a second, that was an entirely new symptom of extreme anxiety to add to my repertoire...I was firmly in a state where the slightest little thing could put me off. So when my French gynecologist glided out of his office wearing a foulard artfully tied around his neck, I felt like I had been jammed with an electric cattle prod.
Dorothy, I said to myself, you’re not in Kansas anymore.
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