Two Firsts

The Beijing winds have kicked up in the last four or five days, and the temperature has started to drop. With winds up to 40 mph and gusts up to 55, it feels like a tropical storm blowing through...except there's no rain! I am really not looking forward to winter in Beijing. I have heard a lot of horror stories about how cold it will get, and the wind will just make it worse! I am eternally grateful to whomever invented thermal underwear!

As long as I have traveled, I've always had a strange desire to visit a hospital in another country. Likewise, I've always felt that if I had my own mode of transportation in another country, then it would really feel like I lived there. Both of my desires became a reality this week.

I finally broke down and went to the University Hospital on Monday of this week. The cold I had for over two weeks was getting worse, and I couldn't fight it with over-the-counter Chinese medicine anymore. The local University hospital was clean, bright, not too crowded and efficient. No one spoke great English, but we both knew enough to communicate. Two hours later, I saw a doctor twice, had chest x-rays and blood work completed with results in hand and received an IV drip of antibiotics. I understood that I had some kind of infection. Friday morning, after visiting the transfusion room twice a day for antibiotic drips for 3 days, I woke up feeling worse than I did on Monday. So, I skipped class and went back to the doctor. She sent me to another hospital.

Hospitals in China are very different than at home (shocker!). As I've learned is typical of hospitals here, the doctors wait inside the rooms and patients queue up outside the room waiting their turn, or in some cases, inside the room while the other patient is being examined. Since I am not native and more interesting, I suppose, there was at least one-two other people in the room waiting his/her turn and watching my examination. No such thing as doctor/patient confidentiality here!

The other hospital was public and it was chaotic....there were people everywhere. It was dark and felt dirty. Some were smoking indoors (they smoke indoors everywhere here...but in a hospital?!?!). The doctor, however, was very knowledgeable and his English was really good. He told me that I have acute bronchitis and loaded me up with 3 much stronger medicines. After having a fever for over 24 hours over the weekend, it finally broke and I am starting to feel a little better.

In between visits to the hospital, I finally decided to join the other millions of Chinese and buy a bicycle! I am now the proud owner of a used red bicycle I've named Dexter (Dexter~HBO show~blood~red). Since I haven't felt good, it hasn't gotten much use yet!

That's about all that happened this week in China, besides a lot of sleeping, coughing and blowing my nose. Since you don't want to see pictures of all that, I didn't post any this week! Zai jian from Beijing!