Chinese Health Care, part 3

Two nights ago as I was going to bed I started to feel the onset of a couple of cold sores in the corners of my mouth.  Now, because this is China, pharmacies are...well...different.  Of course they sell band-aides and vitamins and pills, but because of their pesky habit of writing things in Chinese, it is a very difficult to sort that stuff out.  They also sell things like giant dried mushroom caps, worms, butterflies, cocoon-looking things, and a menagerie of plant-ish substances.  I'm am way to scared of this type of store to even attempt to find Abreva, so instead I decided to tell myself that they were not cold sores and that everything would be fine in the morning.

Everything was not fine in the morning.  Those tingling spots had grown into full-fledged cold sores because, as it turns out, telling yourself that you don't have them does not make them disappear.  Because my last bout of cold sores was so incredibly bad I decided to attack them with any home remedy I could concoct in my dorm room.  After a short Google session I decided to alternate rubbing on some toothpaste and pressing warm tea bags on them.  Everyone on the message boards seemed to think these had at least limited effectiveness, and I was willing to do anything for even a small relief from these bad boys.

Before I go any further, I should explain why exactly I was so terrified of these cold sores.  Now, most of us have probably had one of these at some point and they are no fun.  They hurt, they itch, they are pretty contagious, and you can spread them around your own body if you aren't careful.  I'm usually prone to getting a nose-full of them at a time, but only once a year or so...until China.  Last month I got a raging case of these things that completely covered my mouth and trickled down my chin.  Curiously I also had some allergy-like itchy bumps around my eyes, which were also extremely watery.  I chalked it up to either some new strain I must have encountered or to being in such a different environment than back home, and simply hoped they wouldn't come back.

Now, these home remedies seemed to do absolutely nothing for the problem, and if anything they were making it worse because those little spots on the corners of my mouth had spread around my mouth and were starting to travel down my chin again.  Even worse, they itchy eye spots showed up mid-afternoon.  By the evening I was pretty miserable but I convinced myself that the toothpaste had dried out my mouth area and everything would feel better in the morning.

Nothing felt better in the morning.  When I woke up I was absolutely miserable.  I sat in bed for a few minutes before going to the bathroom because I was too scared to face the mirror.  Eventually I got up and, at the sight of my own face, I burst into tears.  My eyes were puffy and surrounded by red blotches, my lips looked like I had over-done some botox injections and, upon closer inspection, were covered in tiny oozing blisters.  I was hideous, everything hurt, everything itched, and because of how contagious cold sores are, I was terrified of touching any part of my body.  I decided that I simply could not teach class like this and I had to go to the doctor.

I found Maggie (my contact teacher), who took one look at me and said, "Oh, how horrible" as another teacher told me to "drink more water, get more rest."  I explained the situation and got someone to take my class while she got the school's driver and we went to the hospital.

Chinese hospitals function differently than American ones, there are lots of lines you have to stand in to get anything done.  Also, they are confusing.  Thank God for Maggie's help because even she had trouble figuring out which line to stand in and in what order, and she's Chinese!  After waiting around for quite a while I got to see the doctor.  Now, another quaint little thing about Chinese doctors is that it is never just you and the doctor, it's always you, the doctor, and a nurse or two at a desk that is right next to another doctor, another nurse or two, and whatever patient they are seeing at the time.  When the patient is a big, ugly, swollen, white person, all 10+ people in the room are listening intently to what is wrong with you and often taking part in the discussion.  Maggie explained what had happened to me to the doctor, who proceeded to take one look at me and asked me when was the last time I ate a mango.  What I thought was: "F*ing quack China doctor", but what I said was, "Monday".  She then told me I have a mango allergy and I should take these pills, use this cream, and don't drink alcohol or eat anything spicy until I feel better, also don't eat seafood or any meat except pork, especially not beef or lamb.

Stunned, I took the prescription and we headed down to the pharmacy.  More lines and 25RMB (~US$3.75) later I had two kinds of pills and some cream and we were headed back to the school in a Fu'an school bus we happened to see and flag down.  The women we joined inside chattily discussed all my symptoms and the doctor's verdict and I was told that I also had to avoid pineapples because mangoes and pineapples have too much 'fire' in them (this is from the Chinese idea of balancing the foods you eat - some food are warming and some are cooling and you have to balance them...it is also why they hate coffee, too much 'fire').  I politely thanked everyone for their help and headed upstairs to my room.  I quickly fired up Google and it turns out that mango allergies are pretty much exactly like what I have and are a result of some link to poison ivy (among other things).

So, it turns out that I'm allergic to either mango skin, or seeds, or both and maybe that doctor wasn't a quack.  Live and learn, I guess.

My toothpaste 'mask'