God, my head is splitting... I've had a stealth build-up of catarrh over the past couple of weeks which left me temporarily deaf in one ear necessitating a visit to the Doctor Disco Twins. Our doctor is an old friend of Enrico (who isn't in Monterotondo, let's face it) who started studying medicine at the same time as him. Unlike him, however, she managed past three years and actually graduated to become a Family Doctor. This is a bit of misnomer as children can't see the family doctor, they have to go straight to the pediatrician. No one-stop-shop health centre here in Italy, of course.
So the Doctor Disco Twins are our family practice - two sisters who seem to think that one clause of the Hippocratic Oath was 'thou must go to work dressed in 1980's disco attire on a daily basis'. Last time I was there, our doctor was dressed in her usual white coat but from underneath peaked her customary black fishnet stockings, finishing off in a fine pair of 5inch black stilettos with a striking gold spike heel. Her hair has it's own post code. Her sister followed her out of the surgery, again in a white doctors' coat but even more strictly adherent than her sister - she had gone the whole hog and was in full-on Studio 54 Bianca Jagger-era, scarlet sequins sparkling in the grim light of the pensioner-packed waiting room. It's flu jab season. Maybe it's a deliberate effort for the old folks, no-one likes needles, and who could think of the injection when you are being dazzled by a million tiny scarlet mirrors??
So I went in with a blocked ear and came out laden to the gills with prescriptions. I was given anti-biotics the size of horse pills; a steroid inhaler for the nebuliser we were guilted into buying for the children ('it's €130, but you're going to quibble about the price over the health of your children???'); a decongestant and something else, not sure what it was for but I am sure it was integral to the therapy. That was over a week ago and I have steadily got worse, to the extent that now the anti-biotics have finished I feel totally run down and am sure I have contracted some kind of yeast infection thanks to the devastating effectiveness of the drugs in killing all bacteria, good and bad, in their path.
The point is that in Italy, you expect to get properly dosed when you go to the doctors. Everyone knows what drugs do what and if you are not instantly running to the nebuliser at the first sign of a sniff, then you clearly don't know what's good for you. It is a nation of hypochondriacs and I frequently have to mentally rein myself in from shouting, ''how are you?' is a greeting, not a question!!', when I get dragged in to yet another discussion about someone's temperature and various symptoms. I never even knew what a good temperature to be was until I came here but now we have two thermometers and I actually have to stop myself constantly checking the kids when they are ill. Therein madness lies.
Enrico is actually a lot better than he used to be. I well remember and will never let him forget when we lived in Spain he had flu which, with the male-chromosome factored in, makes it double pneumonia: Every five minutes - 'I feel terrible. My temperature's going up again. I can't breathe properly. My ribs hurt. When I do this (breathes in deeply) it really hurts.' I could hear him in the bedroom from the lounge - our thermometer made a 'click click click ker-CHING' sound every time it was used. It sounded like he had a slot machine in there. He actually went to emergency because his temperature was 39° and he thought there was something really wrong. They told him to go home and take paracetamol. Ouch.
The funny thing is that most of our Italian friends are also aware of this, and there are many who are trying to fight the tide of antibiotics, in spite of all efforts to the contrary. Our pediatrician is also a qualified homeopath and is unusually laissez-faire - if the kids are generally OK, he will let them leave without a massive prescription, which invariably requires a second mortgage to pay for. I now beg for paracetamol and Calpol when anyone asks what they can bring from abroad for us. The last time I bought generic paracetamol, it cost me €8... The same packet I could buy in ASDA for 15p. Never again.
Efforts to avoid getting a chill are loudly bandied about and not just with one's own children. Taking a child out without a coat after September will earn you a chastisement in the street. A good friend brought her young daughter in balmy October and committed the sin of taking her out without socks. It was 25° at this time. She was practically publicly pilloried as an unfit mother. It takes a village to raise a child - and to make sure they are properly covered up against the elements, it seems. Many is the time I have heard parents shouting to their children - in playgrounds, and my favourite, actually before jumping in a ballpool - 'don't sweat, darling'. I mean. EH?!! A ballpool is specifically designed to make children sweat, and as for commanding a child not to sweat - well, how exactly do they do that?!!!! An Italian friend of ours recounted Springs spent in Sardinia, which never really gets cold anyway, and seeing foreign children enjoying the warm spring sunshine in shorts and t-shirts, 'and there were the Italian children, wrapped up as if for a polar winter.'
I am trying not to get sucked into this over-exaggerated worrying over health but it is hard as you really do start to feel that you are being careless and hard-hearted. In fact, against most of the common colds and flus, I know, logically, there is really nothing I can do but wait it out yet I still find myself nodding when being reliably informed that the nebuliser is the best way forward (by an old lady in the street) and then worrying that I haven't kept the children's necks/ backs/ tummies covered enough while they are out playing. Oo. Hang on. Could it be that Hypochondria is catching too?? Either way I will just have to carry on being the World's Worst Nurse - if I made it through a childhood where I had to be practically dying to be off school, then I am fairly sure my children will make it through too. Enrico, however, I'm not so sure about...
