Medical issues when you’re away from home sure make life a bit more complicated.
I don’t remember reacting to bee stings as a youngster, but in the last 10 or so years something has changed. Not that I’ve been stung a lot (perhaps 3 times), but each time the reaction was severe. So, I’m very careful to keep out of the way of those buzzing creatures.
Well, one Friday I was walking back to Jouy train station from the INRA lab, along the sidewalk, just minding my own business and admiring the view (sweeping meadows with cows and horses). After a gust of wind under a row of trees, I felt a burning pain on my left hand, looked, and sure enough…there was a puncture, but no sting left, so I guess it was a wasp. Within hours, my hand, fingers, wrist, arm, elbow swelled up to about 3 times the real size, hot and red (thank goodness I took my rings off straight away). Itchy throat, headachy, nauseous, bit dizzy. At the local pharmacy I didn’t need to try and explain in my basic French, could just show them, and got medication.
Here in France, the pharmacist is your first line of defense—if they don’t know what to do they’ll recommend you to a doctor. A couple of days later, things didn’t seem to be improving so we were thinking about doctors etc.
To cut the story short…it did improve with just the pharmacist’s help, thank goodness. But, the episode really got us thinking of broader issues related to travel. Like, how vulnerable one is if struck by a medical problem while away from home. What would we do if…..? Even if you have travel insurance, you still have to first deal with the problem, and if it’s a country with another language then more than likely there will be language problems too.
Not sure how I can stop wasps from falling out of trees in the future!
