7: Pre-existing what?

My short-lived long-term stay in Paris.

The admission I’m about to make is not necessary. I am a private person whose boundaries are, like everyone’s, idiosyncratic. I’ve never thought my cancer diagnosis was something to keep to myself. In 1987, I was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer and underwent a thyroidectomy, as well as radioiodine treatment. I was living in Canada at the time.¹ Later, in the early 2000s, now in northern California, I had a couple of top-up radioiodine treatments, but medical conventions then held that cancer cells should be bashed to death instead of being disarmed and allowed to wither. For the last twenty years or so, my health care has consisted of twice-yearly blood tests and 2 visits with my endocrinologist. A stiff daily dose of thyroid supplement keeps the very few remaining microscopic cancer cells in a deep sleep. If they were to awaken, papillary cancer cells reproduce in sloth-like fashion. My endocrinologist has assured me I will one day die of something, but it won’t be thyroid cancer.

I mention this history as preamble to explaining the untenable situation I found myself in until two days ago. In case you haven’t read my previous posts, I have been compiling the requirements for a visa that would allow me to spend a year in France. One of the requirements the French visa authorities make is a certificate of insurance from a private health insurance company for coverage from the visa’s start date for one year, which these days is how long it takes to be inscribed in the French state health system. I have to show that I have coverage for medical costs up to $30,000, repatriation for medical reasons, and transport of my mortal remains should I expire while in France. Without that certificate, they will not grant me a visa.

Assisted by an efficient expat agency, I found an apartment, a guarantor for the rent, and rent insurance, and opened a French bank account. Then, the agency set me on the path towards acquiring private health insurance. On the recommendations of the agency and an independent insurance broker, I applied for a policy offered by one of the biggest health insurance companies in France and one of the only ones to offer new policies to applicants over the age of 65. Almost a week after my application — in early December — the company sent me 2 forms about the state of my health for my primary care doctor and endocrinologist to fill out. Despite forwarding the forms within minutes of receiving them, I heard nothing from my doctors for over a week. I sent them messages and called their offices. In brief, I learned neither my primary care doctor nor her nurse read my messages carefully and my endocrinologist was on medical leave. With some effort, I extracted a completed form from my primary doctor and sent it immediately to the insurance company.

In the end, as we came closer and closer to the holidays, when most businesses shut down until after New Year’s, the delay in getting the 2nd form filled out turned out not to matter. On the basis of the one, wholly positive report from my primary doctor, the French private insurance company made up its corporate, for-profit mind. It made me an offer I found easy to refuse. The company would cover me for everything except for “thyroid pathologies, their consequences, any examination, follow-up and/or treatment related to them, whether medical, surgical or other” and except for “arterial vascular diseases and their complications, including renal, cardiac, arterial, cereberal, ocular, from any medical, surgical or other related examination, follow-up and/or treatment.”

What on earth does that leave for them to cover? Denying private or national health care coverage to people with pre-existing conditions is ilhlegal in France. Yet, this is how it happens.

Now that it’s clear the visa is out of my reach, many sensations muddy my mind. It is a shock to think I’ll have to give up the apartment. It is an even bigger shock to calculate how much money I’ve spent to get this far in the emigration process, only to be turned down. However, under those sensations, to my surprise, flows a sense of relief, like a thin stream of pristine water running counter to the main current. It suddenly occurred to me that the one feeling I lacked was the anguish of having to leave a city I loved.

I had outsmarted myself. In deciding to settle permanently in Paris, a city I knew reasonably well from my time as an archival historian and as a tourist, I stacked up all the advantages of emigrating to France over, say, Spain or Italy. Many of my friends pass through Paris more often than any other city in the EU. Calais and the dog ferry to the UK are close to Paris.² I enjoy the food and markets. The museums would keep me busy for years. The architecture, especially in certain natural and artificial light, often takes my breath away. I would improve my French. The train stations serve as hubs to other parts of the continent where I have friends but have never visited. What’s not to like?

What I didn’t do was stack up the advantages solidly against the disadvantages. It’s a truism that living in Paris shares many of the downsides of living in Manhattan. It’s expensive. The grossly disproportionate ratio of concrete to greenery took its toll on my feet in the 6 weeks I was there. Negotiating the labyrinthine métro stations with a market cart and a dog on my back was a good cardio workout but sapped my energy.³ After 24 years in suburban northern California, I had grown unused to the pace and demands of urban living. When I was confronted with the reality that I would not be allowed to stay more than 90 days — actually, I was kind of okay with that. Maybe Paris is not for me. It was a very expensive lesson none the less.

All of which is to say, I will not keep my appointment at VFS Global on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan on New Year’s Eve at noon. That bullet has been dodged.

However, two days ago, I returned to Hudson, NY, where I will remain until mid-February. The difference in my reactions to alighting from the Amtrak train two nights ago and landing in Paris in early November is stark. The sky over Hudson was as grey as it was in Paris. The temperature was considerably colder. But at the sight of the Catskills, the Hudson River, and the 19th-century low skyline of gables and spires, a new thought sprung unbidden into my consciousness, “oh, I love it here.”

I will return to Paris to terminate my lease and pack up my few things. With Billie in her travel bag, I will make for the coast, and thence to England, where I will visit very dear friends for a week or so. I am still working on walking trips around southwest England. I expect to return to Hudson in April. From there, who knows?

More soon to come.

1. Because I had Permanent Residence status there, I was enrolled in the provincial health care system. As, but I didn’t pay one Canadian red cent for my treatment, surgery, or radition. The Canadian health care system is, these days, under greater stress than it was when I lived there.

2. If you won’t check your dog as cargo, pay $12,000 to fly with your dog on a private charter, or snag a kennel on Cunard’s Queen Mary, the only way to bring a dog into the United Kingdom is in a car on a ferry from France. Le Pet Express will send their van to pick you and your dog up at CDG, drive you both to the ferry at Calais, and deposit you on the other side. During the crossing, your dog must remain in its kennel, but at least you’ll be seated right next to your pooch.

3. My empathy for urban parents running errands with a one-year-old in tow has deepened, although I will point out their one-year-olds will grow up and leave home. My beloved dog with the mind of a perpetual one-year-old never will, at least not until she “goes off to college,” as I euphemistically phrase it.