In came the doc, accompanied by a small troupe of medical students who had pounced on the opportunity ever since discovering there was a foreigner in the hospital a few days prior. I was hoping to be out of there that very day and thus turned my line of questioning towards the medical professional. “So, I’m into swimming, you know? I know I have to wait but when do you think I can go swimming again? In a few weeks, or a few months?”. Her reply came, “Never”.
A lot in China operates en-masse, be it going home for Chinese New Year or lunch at 11, group tourism or “ooh, look! It’s a foreigner!”, the “in it together” mentality instilled by Mao still pervades every aspect of society. The health services sector is no exception. A visit in the early evening to any little medical clinic, often found outside community complexes (小区) and many major hospitals will reveal hosts of people sitting around on an intravenous drip (挂水). En-masse, both the medical profession and the populace enjoy a steady alliance whereby IV therapy is believed to be a miracle cure for countless ailments.
The scenario reminds me of the now-ancient hit BBC TV series “Blackadder”, set in Early Modern England, and the episode entitled “Bob”, in which the leech is regarded as the preferred treatment for every imaginable affliction, having being recommended to the medical community by the very highest authority, one that incidentally was also the owner of the largest leech farm in Europe. That many a hospital in China are also stakeholders in saline solution companies may be not a coincidence.
My own internment at the People’s Hospital on Guangzhou Lu was in late 2007. Beginning though a week earlier in Shanghai, the whole process (at least now) serves as an interesting study, no leeches required, in the approach of different cities/provinces/municipalities as regards China’s healthcare services in the treatment of foreigners requiring medical attention. As luck would have it, I was in Shanghai for the weekend, but had not expected to be taken to a random hospital with acute difficulty in breathing. Staff assisted me onto a gurney in what amounted to the entrance to the ER while they (very openly) debated what to do. While it was dawning on me that this particular facility was not going to treat a person from a country other than China, arrangements were in fact being made to allow one of the hospital’s ambulances to be assigned to transfer me to a medical institution permitted to accommodate and treat non-Chinese nationals.
Arriving at said facility (sirens blaring; nice touch, thank you), I am fairly sure my breathing difficulties increased upon observing the relative lavishness of the surroundings and the likely price tag attached. Still, perhaps the upside would be a high standard of health care. Despite internally vowing to leave the facility in the next hour with a dose of medicine in my pocket, instead, I found myself in a hospital bed occupying a quiet, clean and pleasant room, decorated in largely pastel shades of pink, designed for two patients (the other bed being empty), diagnosed with a severe case of Pneumothorax; collapsed lung in layman’s terms. I wasn’t going anywhere, and for quite a while by the looks of it.
Then, the big wait. One can only sit and try not to notice the family crisis evolving a few feet away, the uncontrollable sobbing in one corner, the forlorn looks of those grasping their own drip that speaks of their being there for almost forever in another, while centre stage in front through an open door, those just promoted from the queue consult the medical professional resigned to having process, consult, diagnose and cure all that lay before them, by 11. They are watched by those next in line, who are already in the consultation room, hovering, not entirely unlike vultures.
Assuming death is not in the near future, said professional will hesitantly prod their computer with data supposedly associated with one’s condition. A dot matrix printer will exude a piece of paper on which is one’s assigned medication. Please now proceed to the pharmacy, collect a number, and wait some more.
Back in Shanghai in my luxury boutique, a kindly young gentleman of a doctor gingerly approached and explained the procedure about to take place. A chest tube was to be placed between my ribs into the space around the lungs to help drain air and allow the lung to re-expand. The tube would need to be left in place for several days. All nice and clinical.
Taking a long needle like object, he proceeded to insert it into my chest. I prefer the term “stab” as he had to have three goes at it before succeeding. No kind of anaesthetic or pain killer was administered beforehand. It was all I could do to not punch him across the room. Two days later he was back. “The tube is not in the right place. We need to move it.” Only after a very healthy dose of morphine injected into my rear did I oblige.
The Heath care industry in China undoubtedly faces many a challenge, but it is the infant care sector where the obstacles are arguably epidemic in nature. Witness the daily gridlock on Nanjing’s Guangzhou Lu as cars queue interminably for the right to bring the love of their life to join the masses inevitably assigned that IV, or those on foot as they risk life and limb crossing the street to exit or enter the hospital with a newborn so swamped in blankets they are unable to see ahead.
While there are in China very real world factors at play; hygiene, diet and pollution being likely at the top of the list, there nevertheless remains a mentality that a sick child is best cared for in hospital, no matter the ailment or potential pitfalls in getting there. The argument, “it’s just a cold; stay home, rest and drink lots of orange juice” is no dissuader.
Back in Shanghai, I’d had enough of my lavishness. Or to be more accurate, my bank had had enough. Requests to my employer to cover part of the medicare costs had fallen on deaf ears; they rightfully pointing out that I had chosen to have social security payments (that also contribute to health care costs) to be paid to me as a pep to my salary; a given for almost every foreigner working for a Chinese entity. What on Earth good is a pension in China? Or so the argument goes.
Family, however (ever the godsend in China) had stepped in, and had managed to secure me a place at the aforementioned People’s Hospital, a bit further west on Guangzhou Lu here in Nanjing. And so our little entourage set out by minibus, with me clutching the pipe in my chest that ended in a bottle resting, not entirely indiscreetly, in an H&M paper bag.
It was good to be home. Kind of. In said hospital I found my new digs to be the centre one of three beds in what ranked as somewhere in the middle, financially, of what the hospital had on offer. With my roommates, accordingly to my hazy memory, in a somewhat worse condition (one of them worryingly and inexplicably disappearing in the middle of night two), and a regime that was breakfast at 5 and lights off at 8, I set about issuing instructions on the preparing of scrambled eggs in the room’s microwave, and filling an iPad with movies and episodes of “Absolutely Fabulous” that could send me to the land of nod, way past bedtime.
What followed was largely routine. Three days later, the pipe that I had somehow become quite fond of, was removed; the small incision receiving a disappointing three stitches, and I was discharged. The stitches were taken out a week later at a small medical facility that services the local elderly and employees of a large state owned enterprise for which a family member had toiled most of her life.
None of this has left me disillusioned with China’s health care services. Quite the contrary. On this, and quite a few other occasions, when I have been in need of medical attention in China, I have received what I can term very adequate heathcare, given a system over-reaching in the least, served by a team of doctors, nurses, orderlies and technicians who do so with a smile on their face, despite their acute awareness of the challenges ahead. On a lucky day, one only has to visit a medical facility at the right time, when the queues are small and the doctors are more than happy to chat; they will ask you how you are, inquire after your family at home and what you do, and be, well, like any doctor in what we love to call, our developed countries.
But yes, I’ve gone swimming ever since, when ever the opportunity afforded itself. En-masse is going to have to join the line, for now, for me at least.
This article was first published in The Nanjinger Magazine, September 2015 Issue. If you would like to read the whole magazine, please follow this link.
