My love/hate relationship with French pharmacies

Side note: there will be photos soon, I have my camera and now must just remember to bring it with me somewhere and take photos and then there will be photos of my life here in France...

Ok now, with out further ado, I bring you:

My Love-Hate relationship with French pharmarcies

To start off with, I must explain that French pharmacies are nothing, and I mean nothing at all like American pharmacies. If you are imagining an American pharmacy you must stop immediately.

In an American pharmacy, you walk in and you have a pretty good idea of what is wrong with you so you walk over to appropriate aisle and spend 5 minutes look at 10 different varieties of near identical medication and end up picking the medicine that:
a) is the cheapest
b) has the most brightly colored box
c) has the best descriptive words on the outside (like gel-caps, why are gel caps always cooler than boring old tablets?)
based your personality type. Then on your way to the check out you pick up a cheap pair flip flops and a candy bar, and presto you have medication for and illness that approximates whatever illness you have with as minimal human interaction as possible.

Going to the pharmacy in France is like having a religious experience.

In order to understand how pharmacies work in France you must first understand how they regard medicine. When you go to a doctor in France they will give you at the very least three different prescriptions, even if nothing is wrong with you. One of them is always for tylenol.

When you enter in a French pharmacy, the last thing you will see is medicine all set out on counters for just anyone to take. There will be things like face wash and shampoo, but medicine? Absolutely not. Pharmacists in France act like devine intermediaries between you and the sacred potions that will cure whatever ails you. If you have, say a cold, like I did my first couple of weeks and would like somethings like sudafed so that you are not congested all the time, you have to go up to the pharmacy counter. Your interaction will go something like this:

Me: "Excuse me sir, I have a cold, could you please suggest me some medication for such an ailment?"
Pharmaticien: "But of course Madame, is your nose congested or runny?"
Me: "it is congested"
Pharmaticien: (looking thoughtful and politely concerned) "very good, very good, and what color is your snot? clear? yellow? green?"
Me: (looking alarmedly around at whoever is standing behind me, turning bright red, trying not to act completely caught off guard, and trying to pretend like I am thoughtfully considering the question) uhhh..... uhhh... yellow? maybe? or maybe it was green?(another furtive look at the mild manner old lady behind).
Pharmaticien: "very good, I will give you this" (hands me what is effectively a french version of dayquil and nyquil)

What is so fascinating is that the pharmacist seems so concerned about you while you are talking to him--like he is hanging on your every word. It's utterly disarming, and I always feel the urge to divulge more information than is absolutely necessary, and yet utter embarrasment at the fact that it was even asked. And then, after all that concern, he prescribes something like dayquil, which is probably what you or I would have picked out if we had been in the store ourselves. What I want to know is, if I had said "My snot is day-glo green (disregard the fact that I would have been unable to say this in French)" whether he would have given me a different medication.

I had a similar experience today when I went to buy a knee bracey-thing for my knee because I do a lot of walking and it hurts at night. I went to a pharmacy and told the lady and the desk that I needed a knee brace. She nodded solemnly and told me that the brace-specialist would be right with me. A couple minutes later a little old lady appeared and led me into a shuttered back room. "Which knee is it?" she asked. I pointed to my left one. A tape measure appeared in her hand. "I am going to need to measure it".
"uhhh..." (I was wearing tightish jeans). I took off my boot and attempted to role up the pant leg. It was obviously not going to go high enough.
"non, non, non, it's not going to work" said the mild mannered old lady.
I resign myself to the fact that I am going to have to remove my pants and start to take off my other boot. The little old lady says "non, non, non!." (I turn bright red) "You only have to take off one!" I look at her blankly and realize that she is talking about pant legs and then say "ohhh!" and only remove my left leg from the pant leg and leave my right one respectably covered (although if you've seen one leg, then you've seen the other, so I don't what exactly the problem with me dropping trou was, but apparently, it was innappropriate). She measure my leg and brings me a brace and I try it on. It fits, so then I get to put my pant (one leg=singular?) back on and get to head back out to the front and pay for the brace.

Every time, it's a slightly different humiliation. But they're so caring. After the embarrassment wears off, I just want to go back for more.

I now have an urge to come up with fabricated illnesses just so I can go in and ask for medication to see what they will ask me. For example, I want this to happen: "Excuse me, I have diarrhea, could you suggest a medicine?" "But of course madame, Could you please describe its consistency?".

Ahh, it's great, or maybe I've just developed a sick fascination. I wonder if the pharmacy can help with that?