I Know What You Did This Morning (or Essentials for Lab Tests, Italian-style)

You can find out many things necessary to live life in Italy from expat websites.  You can learn how to get the Codice Fiscale, necessary for obtaining everything from a cell phone to a car.  You can get information about visas, stay permits, citizenship.  You can find the best places to buy peanut butter and who might have barbecue sauce.  You might find how to get a card for the healthcare system.  You might not find how to navigate the health system with its tickets and receipts, clinics, hospitals and ambulatorio.  And, unless you know a local, you will not know these two essentials:

My Italian Eye Exam

My first real foray into the Italian health system went like this:

Show up a half hour before appointment time.

Go to the hospital.

Take a number from the machine, now void of handwritten notes telling me it was closed and not to touch.

Pay €26.  I think ten of it, the “ticket fee”, or part of it, might go to the referring doctor.

Stand outside the eye doctor’s office, where a handful of Italians are sitting.

Wait while my “reservation” time comes and goes.

Walk over to the little white-clad, rubber-clogged woman appearing periodically at the office door and thrust my ticket in her face.

Sit and wait for them to call my name.

Socialized Healthcare? Per me, sì, grazie!

So, we went to the doctor last week to get “tickets” so we can get our eyes examined to renew our NYS drivers licenses and have V.’s shoulder checked out.  Our doctor doesn’t speak English, but he was very nice, sitting there in his white doctor coat, trying to get our family health history using a combination of Italian, French and English.

He handed us our tickets and a post-it with the free-phone number to make “reservations” for the exams.