An apple a day

Our first three months in Egypt were completely illness-free, which actually surprised me a little. However, since then, one or the other of us has been sick almost constantly. Our symptoms in and of themselves are not all that worrying, but, sick of being sick, we finally went to the doctor last night.

The $15 fee is paid up front. (That's the whole charge, not the copay.) Then we waited 45 minutes for our doctor to arrive, and 30 minutes for him to see the two people in front of us. The doctor spoke English and seemed to know what he was doing. We were sent home with prescriptions for an assortment of pills.

A sidenote on pharmacies is warranted at this point. Pharmacists certainly take doctor-written prescriptions, but they're not required. If you know what medicine you want, you can simply walk into a pharmacy and they'll give it to you. Or, if that's too sketchy for you, the pharmacist can diagnosis you and suggest the appropriate medicine himself.