Salve from a Liguria that has suddenly discovered its winter temperatures. Although in My Little Ligurian Village they have rarely descended below zero over the last couple of days, at least not during daylight hours, it has certainly felt quite a lot colder.

Friends and neighbours are currently unable to identify me unless I am accompanied by my eminently recognisable dog, what with the myriad of scarves wrapped around my face and the woolly hat pulled down far over my ears. Even the dog has been availing himself of the toasty winter coat my mother gave him last Christmas; he reckons it’s absolutely perfect for those long periods of inactivity spent patiently waiting for me to finish nattering to people on our walks round the village.

The saving grace to all this chilliness has definitely been the glorious winter sunshine, an irresistible lure to the outside world at a time when my pellet heater is doing its very best to pull me firmly in the other direction.

The down side has been the neighbour’s cat, who I have been allowing inside to escape the winter weather, only for her to vomit copiously into the keyboard of my laptop computer. I am not really a cat person at the best of times, but the €70 I will have to shell out for a new keyboard is definitely the final nail in the coffin of my kitty tolerance. Needless to say, the dog is thrilled, not being much of a cat person himself either…

Winter in Italy has brought with it another issue needing to be tackled; namely my asthma. For I am a very definite “winter wheezer” and during the colder months use higher doses of my asthma drugs that I would do when temperatures are more clement. Towards the end of 2011, I began to run out of my stockpiled pills and inhalers left over from my last visit to the UK, and as I was not planning another trip back until the spring (when I may well no longer be eligible for NHS subsidised medication anyway), I paid a visit to the pharmacy to see how much everything would cost were I to purchase directly over the counter. The answer was shocking.

Without a tessera sanitaria (medical card) to subsidise costs, I would find myself shelling out €100 to €150 a month on pills and inhalers. However, having been assured by other expats, as well as by an Italian friend who worked in the healthcare system for over 20 years, that I would be able to get cover because I was an EU member state passport holder, I went to the Azienda Sanitaria Locale (ASL) with my residency card to find out about the procedures to be followed.

There I was told that as I didn’t have a current work contract, I would have to go and sign on at the Centro per l’Impiego (employment office) and bring back a certificate from them denoting my “unemployed” status. Admittedly it took me a month to actually get round to doing that, but once I got there I was told that the ASL shouldn’t have sent me as the rules had recently changed.
So off I went back to ASL, where after an interminable wait - the thought tackling any of these bureaucratic matters makes my blood run cold, the confusion, the hanging around… ughhh – I was told that the law had changed yet again, and that I was no longer eligible for public health care in Italy.

Apparently, as the law currently stands, only EU members (plus their incumbents) who have a work contract are covered, and then only for the duration of said contract. Thus, although I would be covered in the case of a real medical emergency and apparently also in case of pregnancy and childbirth, everything else – doctors’ appointments, specialist appointments and medication – can only be on a pay as you go basis.

When I eventually start making enough money to be officially self-employed, then I will have the option of paying into the system, but until then it looks as if I may just have to start choosing between food and meds!

All the best

Kirsty