Chinese Health Care

"Amelia, I'm in the hospital"
This is the first thing my, obviously very drugged, boyfriend said to me on the phone Tuesday. Because of my crappy cell phone and his pain- and drug-induced state of mind, the ensuing conversation was very confusing. All I knew was he tore up his knee, surgery was involved, he was going to to be in the hospital for multiple days, and I was too far away to do anything except worry.
The next day I found out that he had been rushed into emergency surgery on Tuesday night and he was laid up in a hospital near his school for at least a week. I was happy to hear he was doing much better and that I would be able to visit him later that day. That afternoon I skipped Chinese class and headed up to Dongmen where I bought a small plant in a very Chinese-looking pot and took a taxi to his hospital (he's obsessed with house plants, he has 10 or more in his apartment).
As soon as I was out of the taxi and surveyed my surroundings, I realized that finding him in this messy complex was not going to be easy. I knew the building number, floor, and room number I was heading to, but this complex looked as organized as a 5-year-olds Lego project: building 1 was next to building 2 which was next to building 6, and buildings 3-5 were not in plain sight. As a further complication, I could not remember the word for "building" so I couldn't even ask anyone if I had to. Eventually I happened upon a map with big numbers on it and saw that I had to walk through a sketchy-looking construction zone to get to the right place. I should not have been surprised by this because there are always sketchy-looking construction zones, and you always have to walk through the middle of them to get places. Such is life in a developing country.
I got to building 3 and saw the sign for "bone and joint surgery" and knew I was in the right place. As the elevator doors opened on the third floor I was greeted with big cloud of cigarette smoke. Apparently cigarette smoke is not bad for hospital patients in China.
As I entered the "bone and joint surgery" hallway I was greeted by a smiling, waving Chinese man I didn't recognize. I figured he must have seen a white person wandering around and assumed I was looking for the only white patient in the place (this, of course, was the correct assumption).
The room (like the rest of the hospital) felt reminiscent of a US hospital in the 1950's: four simple metal beds in a stark-white room, with patients wearing hospital gowns heavily faded from years of repeated washings. The room was full of people talking and shuffling bags of food and bottles of water, and the patient where laying there looking uncomfortable. Wally explained that the nurses in the hospital don't take care of people the way they do in the States: they administer medicine and run tests, but that's basically it. If patients need to eat, bathe, use a bedpan, or otherwise move around, it is up to family members to help them. This is unfortunate for a foreigner whose closest family members live on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, so a school employee has been appointed as his designated caretaker.
I had been there less than 15 minutes when a doctor walked in wearing a mask and well-worn scrubs, dragging a gurney. After a brief conversation with the caretaker it was clear that some sort of test or procedure was in order. I was assured that they don't bar visitors from any part of the hospital, so I was invited along to wherever it was he was headed.
We shuffled onto the elevator then down a twisting hallway to the radiology area. There we took a number and continued to the next building, up another elevator and into an ECG room. I stayed in the hallway while they pulled a sheet around him so passer-bys wouldn't be scandalized by his very un-Chinese amount of chest hair. After handing me the machine printout, we headed back to radiology where I again stayed in the hall while they x-rayed his chest, because they don't bother to protect anyone from unnecessary radiation.
Now, if you have been paying attention you might be asking yourself "If he tore up his knee, why does he need an ECG and a chest x-ray?" The answer is this: God only knows. He has no idea why they ran these tests, nor why they keep testing his blood sugar like some diabetes patient. His best guess is that it is some combination of curiosity about a foreigner, odd ideas of "health" in China, and a desire to run up the bill.
Eventually we made it back to his crowded room and he was (painfully) pushed back into bed. I stayed as long as I could without risking my ability to make it back to Longgang that night, and the rest of the time was pretty uneventful. Only time will tell how knee surgery recovery will go in China, but he seems to doing pretty well so far!