Pharmacie de Garde

Working for Let's Go (especially the nightlife) has taken quite the toll on my body and health. Thankfully the medical care in France is ridiculously cheap (if you don't go to the American Hospital for an X-ray and consultation). You should know what you're up against. The phrase "pharmacie de garde" refers to the series of rotating 24hr. pharmacies open in the city. What they should be called is "pharmacie en garde." You know, like fencing, because it's more like battle than Benadryl.

For whatever reason (I can't think of one) antibiotics are only available in France with a prescription, which can't be issued unless you are dying of the plague (from my experience). They used to hand them out like candy, but have since changed their minds, presumably to make any foreigner with an unshakable sinus/chest infection suffer without the saving grace of a doctor's pen. I tell the parmacist that I've had a fever. I get Tylenol. I tell her that my throat hurts. I get some spray that makes my face go numb. I demonstrate to the lady that I am, indeed, coughing up what looks like Chernobyl remnants and I get nothing more than a judging, you-must-be-faking-it look. I propose that maybe, just maybe, if you put all of these together it might add up to what may be an acceptable excuse to get prescribed antibiotics. "No," she tells me, "You will fight it off in a couple of days—les antibiotiques ne sont pas automatiques (antibiotics are not automatic)." This is of course the phrase that has propogated the media to equate taking antibiotics to making a deal with the devil. Making the argument that I'm a weak American who has to stay on a schedule or else I get docked pay doesn't exactly fly. Someone ship me some Nantucket Nectars so I can get my medicine smuggled over and some Vitamin C while I'm at it.