Yeah, I got sick when I met them for the first time over the holidays three years ago. Showed up feeling entirely fine, and the plan was to meet them, spend two weeks in France getting to know everyone, and our wedding was supposed to be January 18th or so. I think that was the original date.
And then my eye started to hurt really bad Christmas, we went to go see a doctor. She thought it was an optic migraine and checked for occlusions and such and wasn't too concerned at the time, and warned me that I might temporarily lose the sight, so I wasn't super concerned when it happened actually. That said, I think I missed the length of time for which it is normal (I think <24 hours) and so for a couple days I was rolling around meeting people without vision in one eye.
New Years, everything blew up; I became partially paralyzed in like three or four hours flat, couldn't piss, became an emergency drive through mountains to the nearest hospital three hours away. I could barely support my weight at this point.
First doc treated me with a catheter and that got me stabilized alright. Second doc after she rotated accused me of faking. IDK if he saw cannabis in my urine and thought I was after drugs, maybe he had a thing against Americans, maybe he was an angel of death, IDK. At any rate he refused to ID himself (big time illegal here, same idea as a police officer in the US refusing to ID themselves), forcefully removed my catheter, and kept me on an IV drip during this time. He blocked anyone else, nurse or doctor from seeing me, pretended to not speak English (I wouldn't be upset if he didn't speak English, but he pretended not to, then magically was fully fluent when I tried to speak French to him many hours later while demanding his identification). Finally, after all of this, he destroyed any paperwork documenting that I was there.
My bladder nearly ruptured, in the hospital, after almost happening once already. He was on rotation for a ridiculously long time because they were short staffed, and during this time I begged for my life for a fucking catheter, then finally figured out that I could void enough mL of urine by screaming so hard that my diaphragm depressed the top of my bladder, so I fought for that in the bathroom, which he ripped open the door to and told me to get the fuck out of his hospital. Sometime before the toilet thing, after being refused the catheter, and after being refused when I begged for them to remove the IV because it was filling my bladder, I finally ripped the IV out myself. I would press the button and he would come in and scream at me to shut the fuck up and stop pressing the button.
After he ripped open the door and I figured out the screaming trick and had removed the IV, he said he was going to send me to urology (wasn't open on the weekends) and I told him to fuck right off and I walked out of the hospital and came back six hours later.
The first doc saw me while doing triage, was shocked that I was obviously lacking a catheter and was back in the ER, grabbed me right away and fixed that situation.
That took things from critical to stable; and we left for Vesoul, I lost my vision entirely on the way, and lost the last of it while in the ER in Vesoul.
There, they were extremely competent, I asked for neurology and explained why I asked for a neurologist; they took me at my word and sent me up.
The Chief of Neurology asked me what was up, I described the symptoms, (blind, hadn't pooped in a week and a half and wouldn't for four weeks, couldn't pee, could only stand and shuffle, on fire, etc, etc) and told him I thought I might have MS. He asked me why and I described some years I spent getting diagnostics through the VA that turned up nothing in the normal realm of things so for a while I suspected a latent neurological disorder and that the eyes and spine made me think MS. So he started there.
I got diagnosed quickly, treated quickly, had a fuck of a surgery where I wasn't able to communicate that the local anesthetic didn't take (they had old plasmapheresis equipment so it went straight into my femoral artery and I had the surgery sans anesthetic accidentally because they cut and oh fuck, it didn't take, but I told them to continue because it was put a tube in now or sit there still in a similar amount of pain while they spent more time prepping the new round of anesthetic) spent a month in critical care, and finally got repatriated to the US in a wheelchair.
During this time, my parents in law:
Accused us of planning this to 'take advantage of French healthcare.' Accused this of being because of cannabis (they found out I smoked because my wife accidentally left her FB logged in and her cousin sent a message verifying he picked up for me). Told her not to marry me because I was sick, and generally made a huge fucking stink saying I was a drug addict and deserved this.
We crossed all of that, bit by bit (the Chief Neurologist talked them about how stupid their cannabis theory was), and eventually found some peace with the whole deal and for three years I had a good relationship with them.
Fast forward to like two weeks ago, I started to feel under the weather and it was three days before we came here to see family. I knew I should have told my wife not to mention it, but she didn't want them to be surprised if something went down, so she said, "u/driftingfornow isn't feeling well and there's some issues we think might be related to a flare, we aren't planning on going to the hospital but I just wanted to warn you in case."
Ohhhhhhhh ho-lee-fuck. Everything sparked again. They said, "This doesn't happen twice! We knew it! You guys are taking advantage of the medical system! Fucking medical tourist! He's taking advantage of you for money! (They don't actually believe that I have an income). He's using you as toilet paper!
Nope, false alarm, just a cold and what turned out to be osteoarthritis in my spine. I had an MRI just a couple days before this blew up and picked up the results the day afterwards. Turns out there is very little cartilage in my neck and that was causing the pain in my spine. In general trembles, numbness, and visual disturbances from the cold and being sick in general.