Word of the Week: Douleur

Do you have pain? Where do you feel the pain? Is the pain more or less than before? On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is the pain?

I haven’t gotten to learn much French this week as I spent the last few days fielding these questions at a hospital. Douleur, pain, was the key word there. I don’t have a lot of experience with the medical world, but here are some observations anyway.

Damn they are easy with the morphine. I got hooked up and pretty much passed out into delirious oblivion for a good fifteen hours. At night I’d wake up and be utterly confused only for a nurse to walk in, turn the valve once more, and I’d feel the warmth of the morphine coursing through my veins once again. In truth I was happy to be off it because it really messes with your ability to think clearly.

Full service. I was blissfully unaware of what was going on most of the time and they seemed to run the whole thing without needing any input from me. Someone came by at some point to get a copy of my passport. A few times a day a doctor came and looked at my belly. Then they gave me the paperwork to go and I was out of there.

Sexy nurses, or the lack thereof. Dispelling some myths here, the hospital was seriously lacking in the ‘hot French nurse’ category, but that’s OK because all I could have done in my state was to slur half-French half-Dutch at them.

Now I can’t work. They issued me an arret de travail, which essentially forbids me to go to work until September 11. This doesn’t mean I can go on holiday either. I have to be at home every day between 9-11 am and 2-4pm. This is apparently serious business and I’m now stuck at my apartment for the next two weeks…

So now I’m shuffling around the apartment like an old man, hunched over to protect the stitches in my belly (I forgot to mention: I had appendicitis). I am preparing an action plan for groceries which will most likely be “aw fuck it just order everything over the internet”. I’d still like to share some choice words with you.

Je m’en fiche, Je m’en fout, Je m’en tape – I don’t care, I don’t give a shit, I really don’t give a shit
Fourchette, couteau, cuillere – fork, knife spoon. Finally I know these words now.
Feignant – lazy. Probably the word I will use the most in the upcoming two weeks.
Tomber dans les pommes – literally, “to fall into the apples”, it means to faint
Connard – something to say to the slow cutters in the metro: asshole.