As we were walking to the apartment after our trip to the Pompidou Centre yesterday, my back started hurting – not totally unusual, but definitely unexpected. And it kept getting worse through the evening, but it wasn’t really bad.

Until 4am, when I awoke in serious pain. Diane helped me get to the bathroom and take a couple of Aleve, and that let me go back to sleep. I don’t think she got back to sleep, though.

We had plans for today – we were going to go with Pete and Debbie and take one of the sightseeing boats on the Seine. And perhaps we’d squeeze in one more museum.

But when we got up around 7, I wasn’t feeling great and the weather wasn’t appealing, so we stayed around the apartment (passing up second breakfast!) and chatted. We walked to Penny Lane, a Mediterranean sandwich restaurant a block away; it was delicious, and I can’t believe they can pay their bills only being open for lunch five days a week! I noticed a lot of Israeli cookbooks (many in English) and asked the owner about them; he was born to Israeli emigrants to France. An interesting place and well worth a visit if you’re in the neighborhood.

I suggested we walk to Galeries Lafayette to look around, but had to turn back after only a few steps – Diane, Pete, and Debbie went and enjoyed the views; I sat and iced my back, which helped a little.

By the time they got back, I was hurting again; I’d had my second dose of Aleve but it hadn’t kicked in. I asked our host if they could recommend a doctor and they said I should call SOS Médecins on 3624. When I called, Orange told me that my account had insufficient credit! I finally figured out that 3624 is a pay-per-minute number, so I couldn’t call it from either my French or American phone. I asked my host for more help and eventually got a regular number to call, 01 47 07 77 77.

You know how frustrating it is when you call a business and get told “our menu has changed” and “your call is important”? It’s worse when you’re in pain and the messages are in a language you don’t understand. My host told me to just stay on the line and eventually the call would be answered by a human being who might even speak English – and it happened!

Their first question was where to send the doctor. It was not easy to communicate the street name (Rue du l’Échiquier) – my pronunciation was so bad that it made it hard for the agent to understand the name when I spelled it using NATO phonetics! But eventually, information was exchanged and they said the doctor would arrive between 8-10pm.

And he did, and he spoke English well enough to understand me (it didn’t help that my voice is almost gone). He gave me a serious painkiller and several prescriptions to take for the next few days.

Which I had to have filled, which meant a trip to the 24-hour pharmacy at Place de la République. I was feeling much better and thought about walking the 15 minutes; then I came to my senses and we went there by Uber.

We had to wait in line for a few minutes; then one of the three pharmacists on duty called us over and started working on our prescriptions. If we’d been at a CVS at home, we’d’ve been told to go away for half-an-hour and then get into the pickup line and see if they got the insurance right; here, I never had to leave the counter, I had the prescriptions in 10 minutes, and the total cash price (without insurance) was about EUR 23, including an 8 Euro fee for night service. There are days I wonder about the American health care system.

We came back to the apartment by Metro and I was able to help finish packing (much better than earlier in the day!).

I’m feeling a lot better, so I thought it was worth splurging EUR 3.50 and trying one of the Covid tests I bought here – it showed “negative”, as did the one Diane tried. I am far from recovered (I’m going through Kleenex and eye wipes faster than I go through candy!), but it’s a good sign.

Today, we had second breakfast at La Baguette d’Hauteville, the boulangerie our host had recommended. I’d hoped to be able to eat there; Diane had hoped to be able to get hot chocolate. We were both disappointed, but took the “breakfast formula” back to the apartment and made do – it was good but not special.

We spent most of the day at Centre Pompidou, the National Museum of Modern Art. The art is well-signed in French and English, and the museum wasn’t crowded. And it has wonderful views over Paris.

We couldn’t finish it – not enough energy (it’s open until 9pm, so there was plenty of time!), but here are a few of the works which made an impression on me, even if I don’t know why in some cases!

But the work which really drew me in is called “Sunday’s Crashes” by George Widener.

I was surprised to see a painting that looked so technical – so I researched Widener a little bit when I got back to the apartment. He’s “on the spectrum” and is a self-taught artist and a calculating savant who sees patterns in numbers and data an turns them into art. I found a fascinating article at We Make Money not Art that was well worth the read.

We stayed at the Pompidou until we ran out of energy.