Swine Flu and Fun at the Hospital

Yep, that’s right.  I went to the provincial hospital here in Xi’an to get tested.  My results came back and I passed!  With a ‘+’!  That’s good, right?

Not so much.  All my traipsing around China has finally caught up with me.  I’ve got the swine flu.  I’m quarantined inside my apartment for a full week, after which I have to go back to the hospital to get tested again.

Swine flu isn’t all that bad, really.  It’s not unlike any other flu I’ve ever had.  However, what I’ve read is that it is particularly dangerous for asthmatics (i.e. me) because of how it affects the lungs and breathing.  So I need to be especially aware of how my breathing is.  If it becomes worse I need to go straight to the hospital.  My presumption is that if I don’t it could lead to serious complications.

So I get to spend my Christmas and my vacation alone in my apartment.  Yippee.

This ain’t a pity party though.  Rather, I think this is a great opportunity to show all of you how annoying China’s medical system can be.

I started my Monday by going to the campus medical clinic to get tested for H1N1.  They did the perfunctory exams and told me I had something like swine flu but it couldn’t be confirmed.  I had to go to the hospital to get checked for sure.

At the provincial hospital, I first walked all the way to the back (the place is like a small campus) to the foreigner’s building.  The guard at the gate said I couldn’t go in but would not explain why (in my experience you rarely get an explanation from police or security in China).  So I had to wait for 5 minutes for a nurse to come out and show me where to go.

Following her I had to walk back to the front of the hospital, where I had originally entered, to another building.  The doctors there told me I had to go register in the main building, at a window down a hallway off the entrance room.  It cost 3 RMB to register and I took the receipt back to the doctors.

The doctors examined me a little bit and asked me about my medical history and all the usual stuff.  Then they said I had to go back to the window where I registered to pay for the medicine and the tests.  So I did.  The medicine was 197 RMB and the test was 200 RMB.

First I had to take the receipt for the medicine to the pharmacy to pick up the Tamiflu and some cough medicine.  Then I brought the other receipt back to the doctors so they would test me.  Finally done!

Keep in mind that, during all of this, no one spoke a word of English.  The only way I was able to navigate this labyrinth was because I had my school’s foreign teacher liaison with me translating.  I take pity on any foreigner  that has to go through that who can’t speak really good Chinese and doesn’t have a friend/coworker with him.

At the time I was still very sick and not so steady on my feet.  My only thought was, “Geez, this is a lot of walking for sick people in a hospital.”  My translator’s response was, “Yes, it’s not so convenient.  But usually people in China have family members with them.”  To me, that doesn’t make it OK to be wildly inefficient.

So this is your little window into how screwed up things can be in China.  All the walking back and forth is absolutely absurd, especially for people at a hospital (assuming, of course, that one is at a hospital because one is extremely sick).  That’s the downside. 

Systems like this are in place in many different ways in China.  You must register with one person, pay with another, and pick up with another.  My assumption is that this system intentionally creates more jobs, which China is in desperate need of (regardless of how redundant they are).  That I can understand.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

On the up side: my entire visit, examinations, and treatment cost me a total of 400 RMB ($58.58).  So, China’s medical system may be very inefficient but it sure is cheap!

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