Cheaper than a doctor visit without health insurance. Even with the plane ticket.
A whole fish
I've always found an entire cooked fish in a little bowl an interesting menu item in a work cafeteria.
There's plenty of other dishes that are interesting in their own right: beggar's chicken, sichuan chicken, pig brain.
Yet the little fish staring up at you, even as its skeleton is still intact, has an appeal that made me eat at least one per work trip.
I do enjoy fishing and like to eat them occasionally. I take great care to remove those tiny little bones. But when in China, as I am straining to understand the accent and conversation, I have always swallowed a bone or two. Luckily on my first trip and bone, I received some good instruction to eat a bunch of rice afterwards to help glom onto it to prevent problems later.
.
"Hangzhou, we have a problem."
So this lunch was like any other. Grab a fish, some vegetables that I don't recognize, and a Coke. Sit down and talk to a colleague. Then it happened.
Now, every time I suck a bone down the gullet, I recall learning that mountain lions can eat porcupines. They apparently "roll" any quills that they ingest down their throat to ensure an injury free kill.
I still don't understand how my eighth grade teacher could believe that it works like that.
I felt it on the back of my tongue. Being enthralled in the conversation and aware of the custom to cover your mouth while using a toothpick, I didn't want to try recovering the bone right then.
So, in goes the rice.
Success! Almost. The bone shifted down another inch, well past the point of me being able to recover it.
The conversation got a little slow, I can't even remember what we were talking about. I happened to mention what was going on, and one of the Chinese insisted that I needed to go to the hospital. "The hospital is not very far and it's very important to be sure you're OK."
After a few minutes of downing more rice and trying to remember about throat physiology from my kids'
"Uncover the Human Body" book, I ended up giving in and agreeing to go to the hospital.
2 girls, a guy and a taxi
Turns out, when Americans are this dumb and helpless, no expense is spared. Within 10 minutes a car was downstairs. I got into it and waited on the coworker to whisk me to what I hoped was really a hospital rather than a traditional chinese medicine facility.
Was I in for a treat. I got to share this experience with two girls I had never met. One was a good English speaker but unfamiliar with hospitals, the other knew her way around the hospital but couldn't speak English.
With my embarrassment piqued, we headed out and just 5 minutes later we got dumped off at a nice looking building. The central atrium and multiple floors looked rather inviting. We went to stand in line at the reception counter. It was only five people deep.
It's how much?
National healthcare is a hot button topic in the States. We always hear about about how Canada and European countries have superior systems. At least in some respects, by some "investigators".
Well, I don't recall anyone ever mentioning Chinese healthcare.
A visit to the Ear Nose Throat specialist, prepaid, ran me about $1.25. Yes, less than $2.
We traveled upstairs to sit in the waiting area. But, my helper familiar with hospitals mistakenly took us to the dentist. Once we sorted this out, we made it to the ENT room.
EEEEEEEE
We are called in to the room. One patient is already there with the older doctor. The younger doctor is free, so I sit down. Translations ensue, and I am introduced to that thing that Bugs Bunny wears on his head when he's acting like a doctor.
I found out that it's used to reflect light from a lamp near my head, down into my throat.
In goes a dental mirror, attempting to peer down into my throat using the light and reflector, except she's a little timid. Here's where I learned something interesting. She kept making a high pitched noise at me. It sounded like "EEEEEEEE". After a few times, I got the point. This was the equivalent of "Ahhhhh". Whether this was an advanced technique or just the way they do it over there, I don't know. I started doing it on command.
Still no luck. With the other patient done, or at least bored of my foreign antics, I got passed up to the apparently more experienced doctor. New seat, new batch of dental mirrors pulled from what I hope was sanitizing fluid, and a new twist. This older lady decided that I needed to stick out my tongue, but was too cool to demonstrate it. Translation ensued, and I stuck my tongue out. This is where her experience really shined through. Before I knew what was happening, she had grabbed a little cloth and wrapped my tongue in it, yanking it out of joint, acted as if this was perfectly normal, and made me "EEEEEEE". And stuck a dental mirror down my throat.
Not once, but three times.
Still no luck. All the while they're asking me if I still feel the bone, and I explain that I can and that it seems to be moving around a little bit.
So then come the forceps. While she's jamming these pliers down my throat and shoving around whatever it is that sits just 2 inches above my stomach, she makes me "EEEEEEE". Except I only get half of it out before my gag reflex kicks in, she withdraws her hand and tool, and nods to the floor by my side. This is when I notice another feature of the room that had escaped my previous inspection, a conveniently placed puke bucket.
Not once, but three times.
Disgusted that she won't make international news by removing the fishbone from the American's throat, she dismissed me and instructs me to have an X-ray. She couldn't find anything in my esophagus.
Eat the Ball
Since getting zapped with X-rays is a new service, we have to pay again. $1.60. Less than 2 dollars (I'm repeating this so you don't think I've misplaced the decimal point). What kind of X-ray is this?
Down to the level beneath the ground floor. Into a room with large sliding doors on either side of the room, some equipment to the right, a technician window, and what I assume are lead aprons on the wall. Of course I'll be wearing one of those later, right?
Another slightly odd Chinese thing that I ran across on a prior trip was being offered hot water on a cold day. Nothing in it, and not necessarily Evian, but steaming.
I really didn't think it strange to see the X-ray doctor with a Styrofoam cup of steaming water on the counter in front of him. I just figured he was going to drink it or make some tea while he laughed about my experience with my translator. He took a bag out of a drawer. It wasn't a tea bag, it was a plastic bag that looked like it had medical-type writing on it. He put a couple of spoonfuls of white powder from the bag into the hot water, then stirred. No alarm bells yet.
Then he grabbed a cotton ball from another bag and dunked it into the cup. Ding!
He mixed it up, making sure that the cotton had soaked up plenty of the milky fluid, then handed it to my translator and directed us into the X-ray room and closed the heavy doors.
She told me I had to hold this cup. So I did. I asked what I was to do with this cup, and she waved me off, paying attention to the doctor and his eager technicians behind the glass.
The doctor spoke some instructions into audio system in the room, and my translator told me to step up onto a platform. In front of me was an oversized version of what my dentist uses to shoot pictures of my teeth. Over my translator's shoulder I could see the lead aprons hanging on the wall. Perhaps the aprons were protecting some film canisters on hidden shelving....
"Eat the ball."
"Now see, that's what I was wondering about...." I literally cocked my head to the side and did that eye thing that expresses something between disgust and fear. I snickered slightly while using the spoon to find the soaked cotton ball in the bottom of the cup, and started to question various life-choices I've made over the years. I put the cotton ball in my mouth.
I don't know if you've ever tried to eat a cotton ball. This was a first for me, but I did what you do when you eat something, I tried to chew it. I immediately realized that I couldn't break down a cotton ball by chewing on it, so I just choked it down.
Then she told me to drink it. While I drank this elixir, the X-ray element passed up and down in front of me. Fluid gone, I waited for the white sludge at the bottom of the cup to work its way into my mouth. Luckily they quickly announced the All Clear. One of the techs grabbed the microphone and tried out his Crazy English , "All Done!"
The X-ray doc explained that he couldn't see anything, and thought that the bone had probably passed into my gut and I was just feeling the injury of the jabs. I should feel better shortly.
And I did; the next day I couldn't feel anything except the palpable scorn of my coworkers as I walked back into the office.
So, a trip to a hospital, two ENT specialists, a set of X-rays, and a souvenir "chart" ran me less than three bucks. I thought about submitting a claim on my health insurance just to see what would happen, but I want to hang on to the receipt.
Links:
Cover your mouth while using a toothpick
Crazy English
