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2008 Olympics>Expat's Eye
UPDATED: April-18-2008 NO.17 APR.24
Statutory Warnings
Adventures in the health trade
By KARTIK KRISHNA

LI SHIGONG

There are hospitals, and then there are Beijing hospitals. My first brush with the medical profession in China was actuated by an emergency of sorts, when my girlfriend collapsed and blacked out briefly as she exited from the toilet of an Indian restaurant (the food was not the culprit, not this time). Flustered Chinese waiters revived her with water, but she awoke to sharp, crippling pain in the lower abdomen. I called our landlady, and bless her sweet overflowing Chinese heart, she arrived within minutes and escorted us to the nearest hospital.

My girlfriend could barely walk, still swooning from time to time. The pain continued, so intense that she was seeing flashing spots behind her eyes. The first half an hour at the hospital was torture, and not just for her, as my landlady rushed with me from counter to counter, fashioning our customary stockpile of forms out of thin air, as it were. But the big guy upstairs was evidently on our side that day, as my lady was ushered past a long line of people into a bright, sparsely-attired emergency room.

Afterwards, on our way home, I grudgingly acceded that Chinese doctors were superior in many ways to their Indian counterparts. The medicines were cheaper here, the hygiene levels higher, the nurses more cheerful and although the reams of red tape to be negotiated were about the same, at least we were secure in the knowledge that we'd be well looked after, if not downright mollycoddled, at the end. The doctor in charge had worked like greased lightning to assess her condition (an untreated urinary tract infection that had squirmed its way to her kidneys, creating a life-threatening situation), and dealt with it calmly, professionally, magically.

A year passed, and I got my own back. After enduring a spate of digestive problems, I decided to investigate and get some tests done. A Chinese-speaking female friend accompanied me to a different hospital. We raced through the paperwork in record time, and arrived outside the testing ward. I had carried a sample of my stools with me, assuming that was all they would require. But the matron had other plans for me. Without batting an eyelid, she requested that I transfer a smidgen of the contents of the bottle in my hand, into a small round box, seemingly unsterilized, using little else but a plastic spoon. And I was to accomplish this in plain sight of everyone, there and then in the corridor. My impression of the hospital began to plummet rapidly.

Once this onerous, hugely embarrassing task was achieved, I was asked to kindly be seated inside the ward and wait for a nurse to collect a blood sample. Maybe I was just doomed to have a bad day, but they sent a rookie, a completely green, barely-out-of-her-teens intern who insisted on working backwards. She pushed a needle into my skin and I yelped with pain. Then she started prodding in an effort to unearth a vein. This took all of four agonizing minutes, until she'd extracted the blood as well as her pound of flesh. The throb in my forearm finally subsided about three hours later. Predictably, I did not return to that hospital, except to pick up the test results, which held no credibility for me anyway. That evening I called up my American lady friend (now ex-girlfriend) and gloated. She was as appalled by the events of the day as I'd expected her to be. Round two to me.

A few months later, a third hospital was graced with my wheezing, hacking presence. A nasty cold and cough, unheard of in Beijing, had pretty much debilitated my everyday existence. An x-ray revealed a bronchial infection, and drugs were prescribed. So far so good. I began the course as advised: an antibiotic and a mycotic agent. For some reason-call it feminine intuition or just a terminal case of hypochondria-I scanned the Internet for the medicines I'd been given. The shocker came up quickly: I was told that the mycotic agent or expectorant of that name was supposed to be in solution form, whereas the doctor had prescribed pills, which were used to treat something else altogether. I had already taken one dose the previous evening, and had spent a great part of the night sweating and restive. Needless to add, I threw the rest of these pills in the trash, but continued with the antibiotics. I got better.

I was about to call my ex with details of my latest cataclysm, but decided to suspend it until my fourth trip to a hospital. I was actually looking forward to falling sick just so I could clinch an emphatic 3-1 victory. As luck would have it, I walked into one of the best hospitals in Beijing, and everything went right.

The tie-breaker has yet to be played. Don't hold your breath.


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