Medicament

n. – medicine
Certain medicines are handled differently here than in the US. Several of the over-the-counter drugs that we find there are only available by prescription here and vice versa. A doctor once recommended ibuprofen to me when I had a sore throat. The normal dose is 200 mg or one pill, but she recommended I take at least two to be effective (which I always do). She asked me if I needed a prescription to which I responded I already had some, but what I realized she meant was that if I wanted to take a dose of 400mg or the equivalent of two pills, that would only be available by prescription. This must be why they sell them so parsimoniously in boxes of only 10 at a time and why you have to ask for them at the counter. In New York, I used to buy bottles of 200. I imagine here, that could make me eligible for rehab!

Claritin, the popular anti-histamine available OTC in the US, is only available by prescription here where Zyrtec, another type of the same medication that is only available by prescription in the US is available OTC here. Melatonin, which is often recommended to aid in jet lag and is easily accessible in the U.S., is also a prescription medication here.

While anti-depressants are prescription only, they are relatively easily prescribed. I once read that France has the highest percentage of people on anti-depressants which I think has less to do with a nation of depressed people and more to do with the ease by which they can be attained. Medication to treat the ills is covered generously within the health care system. However in the case of depression, therapy, is not. Therapy is looked at as an indulgence where the medication is looked at as a necessity to directly affect that condition. Homeopathy on the other hand is popular among many pharmacists who seem to prefer a more natural remedy to pharmaceuticals. I’m sure there is a fair amount of disagreement between internists, psychologists and pharmacists on appropriate methods of treatments.

Of course everyone is concerned with swine flu here – so much so that the customary kissing on both cheeks has been forbidden in many work places and schools. When my husband felt under the weather recently after a trip, we stopped by the pharmacy to ask for a remedy. The pharmacist panicked, pulling her shirt over her mouth and threw face masks at us. My husband was instructed not to touch anything in the apartment or our building and to call emergency services right away, which we thought was a bit extreme. We decided to wait it out a night so while he sat on the couch behind his mask, I was in charge of opening doors and turning on lights. In the morning, he was as good as new.

At our office, there are now signs in the restrooms with detailed instructions on how to properly wash your hands. I think I had that one down already, but question whether this is designed for people who are only now starting this practice in light of a pandemic.

I’m often amused by instructions on products. “For external use only” is one of my favourites. Hardly anything with this warning on it is something I would ever think of ingesting. We have quite a few toxic things around the apartment at the moment in my never ending quest to destroy the mosquitoes that seem to have targeted us specifically since nobody else in Paris seems to be bothered by them.

There are oil diffusers that we plug in, citronella candles that we burn, a light that’s supposed to attract and then trap them and my all time favourite, the swatter that’s electrically charged with the push of a button. It looks like a small tennis racket, but rather than having to swat and squish the bugs against a surface, all you have to do is catch them within the net and they’re electrocuted.

Many of these items render our apartment a somewhat hazardous environment for children or small animals so we always have to take care when either come to visit. I’m sure the oils produced by the plug-in repellent are completely poisonous to us as well, but again, I respect that they’re for external use only and since I started practicing washing my hands long before the swine flu came about, feel that I’m pretty thorough with this procedure following any handling of them. Now if they could only come up with a medicine that protects against mosquitoes, prescription or not, I would be first in line.