Ma Coloscopie | Podcast en français COURANT avec sous-titres.

Welcome to the podcast Fluidité for foreigners who learn French, episode 120. In this episode, I'm going to tell you how an exam I recently took went. A coloscopy. So stay tuned! Do you learn French? Fabien offers you content in common French that talks about culture, history, French geography, but also biographies, dialogues or learning tips. Welcome to the Fluidité podcast. Before we start, I invite you to join our VIP club. This is my Patreon page where you have material to deepen my content and become better in French. For example, for each content I make, you have bonuses such as the vocabulary list, bilingual transcriptions, the audio version and a private group course where I explain the grammar of the contents. The VIP club is also a large community with more than 300 members, 300 learners, and we talk together every day on the Telegram group and on the Discord server. We do different activities to practice French. So you can also practice your French, find or share resources with other students, other learners. And it's very important for you, so you don't feel alone in your learning and to always be motivated. So you have the link on podcast platforms and on YouTube to sign up for the VIP club and you can stay as long as you want. Come with pleasure. In the description of the episode, you also have the YouTube video version, if you listen to me in audio, with subtitles in French or in other languages to improve your oral comprehension. And you also have the free French transcription in the description. Well, it's not a topic that appears every day on YouTube, nor a trending topic, nor a fashionable topic. But we're going to talk together about a medical exam I recently took, my coloscopy. So don't worry, everything is fine for me and I'm going to explain why I did it, when I'm young enough for that. So no worries about my health, everything is fine. Here I say the best because it's the superlative of good. For the state of health, we use the verb to go. I'm doing well, she's doing better, they're doing very well. How are you, ma'am? So always with the verb to go and the adverb good, but not with the verb to be. So I'm doing very, very well and I was doing very well just before I passed it. And we say take an exam or do an analysis, do an analysis for example. So coloscopy is an analysis that consists of putting a camera in the entire digestive system to analyze it entirely. The word coloscopy comes from the words colon and scopi. The colon is the final part of the digestive system. And scopi comes from Greek to say observe. Theoretically, the first syllable of coloscopy is pronounced co as in col. But this difference in pronunciation is less and less pronounced except in certain regions. So we can say coloscopy instead of coloscopy. Simply repeat the pronunciation that you hear most often and you will be understood in both cases. It's a very slight difference that doesn't need to be marked. So for this exam, we need to be under general anesthesia. The medical procedure that consists of putting you to sleep so that you don't feel the pain or so that it's not unpleasant. Because it consists of putting a long camera up to the intestines. So it's better not to be aware of that. I wouldn't have wanted to do it without anesthesia for my part. And in any case, I wasn't left with a choice and that's good. That's good is an expression to say it's better that way. So before telling you the whole process, the whole course, I'm going to tell you why I did that. And no, it's not because I'm a fan of Ryan Reynolds. In fact, the actor passed one recently following a lost bet. A bet is a game you play with participants whose loser will have a punishment. Either lose money if it's a sports bet for example. Or have a bet if it's a bet without money. So the bet is the punishment. Ryan Reynolds therefore lost a bet against one of his actor friends. And the bet was to go through a colonoscopy. Funny bet anyway. But surely Ryan wanted to pass one since he is 46 years old. In France, it is recommended to do a cancer screening test from the age of 50. So it's at that age that we recommend this kind of exam. And he documented his colonoscopy. That is, he hired a film crew to film the whole process. He filmed to reassure people and encourage them to be analyzed when necessary. Because in his case, they removed a very small tumor which could have turned into cancer. Here I say could have because it's conditional since tumors do not become systematically cancerous. And that's also why I'm telling you about the process. It's to reassure people who have to do it. So if I can motivate these people to take the plunge, to take action, it will be great. As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a professional film crew. So I didn't film anything because it would have been too annoying to focus on the things I had prepared for the exam. And in addition to managing the camera, the microphone, the light, asking for permission to film, etc. So I'm going to tell you everything without showing you the images. Too bad. Well, it's a doctor who wanted to do this analysis because I had some minor problems last year. And also 15 years ago, I had an operation. So the doctor didn't want to take any risks since she's a professional. So she's a gastroenterologist. So she's a specialist. In France, we say a generalist. When we talk about a doctor we're going to see for general health problems, we also say a doctor. And he or she can point you to a specialist, like a dentist, a neurologist, a dermatologist, a dermatologist, or an otorhinolaryngologist. But everyone says an ORL. Generally, we follow this path of care when we have a health problem to benefit from a better reimbursement by French social security. That is, you must first consult a generalist who will either solve your problem himself or herself, or send you to a specialist. And this doctor will give you an order that you will give to the specialist. The doctor can even contact the specialist, call the specialist, so that you go there on his behalf and that you have an appointment more easily. You can still consult a specialist without going to a doctor first, but you may be less reimbursed or not reimbursed in the majority. For my part, I followed the usual French care path. So I went to see a doctor in November 2022 who prescribed me a treatment and who still called this gastroenterologist so that I have an appointment in January. Even if the treatment that the generalist gave me was enough to heal me, I preferred to keep the appointment with the specialist to prevent the problem from receding, to prevent the problem from repeating itself. So in January 2023, I went to see the gastroenterologist who told me that I had to undergo a colonoscopy. I was a little apprehensive at first because I had heard that it was a somewhat tedious exam, but you will see that it unfolded more easily than I thought. Because to analyze the entire digestive tract, it must be completely cleaned, it means that you have to go through a purge step. In short, you have to empty everything just before the exam. You have to eliminate all possible salts that remain in your intestines. We say salts to talk about human dejections, we say poop in a familiar or informal way, but we say go to the salt in a more formal or medical way. So a doctor will ask you, how are you doing with the salt? That's why we say how are you doing in French, because when everything goes well with the salt, it is generally a good health indicator. So how did it go for me? The gastroenterologist explained everything to me in detail. We made an appointment for the day of the analysis at the clinic and we made another appointment with the anesthetist. Indeed, before having a general anesthesia, you must consult the anesthetist so that he can take stock of your overall health state to prepare for his intervention. So a week before day J, I went to the anesthetist's clinic. And from 3 days before the exam, I had to follow a fiber-free diet. That is, you can eat no vegetables, no fruit, no bread, or food that contains fibers. Or in the form of mashed potatoes or compote, so a little soft or a little liquid food. This is to prevent fibers from getting stuck in the intestine and prevent good analysis. It's not very difficult, but it made me weird not to eat bread or vegetables or fruit during these 3 days. And the day before the operation in the evening, the purge began. First I had to stop eating at 7 p.m. Then I had to drink a laxative to evacuate everything that was in my intestine. To empty everything, I had to drink a lot of liquid. And so I spent part of the evening and night in the bathroom. I had an appointment in the afternoon, so in the morning I had to take another laxative to do a purge again. Doctors forbid you to drive a vehicle after the anesthesia. So they prescribe you a medical transport, a taxi paid by social security. And it was convenient for me because no one could take me to the clinic or pick me up. So I went to the clinic by taxi and my wife accompanied me. Once at the clinic, I was super well taken care of. The nurse checked that everything was ready and in place. She asked me questions to find out if I had done the purge well. And then I went to the operating room. The anesthetist stung me and I fell asleep. And I woke up an hour later as if nothing had happened. As if nothing had happened is an expression to say as if nothing had happened. I was brought back to the room and I felt fine. I was given a snack. A snack is a small meal that is eaten between the three meals of the day. In general, children have a snack at 4 p.m. So three or four hours before dinner. We also say a snack or a snack. After this snack, a nurse came to see me to know if everything was going well. I told her that everything was great and that I was not sick anywhere. In short, that I felt perfectly well. The staff of the clinic called the taxi and he came to pick us up when we left. He brought us home and that was the end of the journey. When I arrived, I was starving since I hadn't eaten in 24 hours. So I ate normally. I even ate a lot, actually. In the end, the only slightly difficult step is the purge since we go to the toilet all the time. It's unpleasant, but it doesn't hurt. So for all that, I almost didn't pay anything since all the costs were taken care of by French social security and my mutual. Consultations with the doctor and the gastroenterologist were fully refunded. Only the visit to the anesthetist was partially refunded. So I paid about 10 euros in total. And of course, the analysis at the clinic plus the costs of the clinic were paid directly by social security and my mutual. I didn't need to advance those costs. So I didn't need to pay first to be refunded afterwards. I had asked for a private room but they didn't have any more. So I had a double room which was included in the social security charge. If I had a private room, I would have paid a little bit. Thank you very much to the French social security system for making sure that these cares are almost free. It's still a chance to have these benefits because I don't know if it's the case in other countries. And social security refunds you even if you have a one-year visa, for example. Know that I made a full episode explaining the health system in France. So don't hesitate to listen to it to know everything about it. I hope some of you will be reassured if you were afraid. Thank you all for watching or listening to this episode. I hope you learned French, vocabulary, grammar and all that. Listen again several times to assimilate and improve your oral comprehension. And if you stayed until now, the episode interested you. So put a like, and subscribe to my podcast and my YouTube channel. Bye and see you soon!