Medical Schmedical....

Today we went for our foreigner’s medical checkup. Our Chinese student guides agreed to meet us in the morning in front of the foreign student dorms and then take us to the hospital. We had tried to finish this procedure a few days ago, but were told we each had to bring passport photos in order to process the paperwork.

We arrived ready to see if we could make it through Chinese bureaucracy and into an actual medical exam. The students took the lead and quickly explained how to fill out the relevant paperwork. We then were separated into a boys group and a girls group.

Our first stop was in a small office on the ground floor. A man who was dressed in hospital scrubs motioned me to come in and sit down. He handed me a spoon and told me to put it over one eye and read an eye chart. The eye chart was unlike any I had ever seen before. Instead of letters, the chart contained a series of symbols that looked like an upper-case letter ‘E’. Each of the ‘E’ shapes was facing a different direction. At a loss as for what to do (I don’t really have a name for these symbols), I held three fingers in the air and mimicked the shapes.

Next we were taken to another room for x-rays. (Why?) My American classmate and I were taken to a room that looked like a bank vault. After handing the doctor(?) the paperwork, my classmate walked through the vault door. I could hear the muffled sounds of the doctor giving her instructions, and the next thing I knew she was taking off her shirt for him. Suddenly the doctor’s instructions became louder, and she quickly ran behind a curtain and put on a dirty bathrobe. When he placed her in the proper position for the x-ray, he ran back towards us and slammed the vault door. The x-rays were taken, and after a minute he spoke into a microphone and told her she was finished.

Our next stop was the DMV of hospitals. This was the room the hospital uses for drawing blood. Sitting behind glass windows sat several people dressed in scrubs. Patients were ordered to stand in line until one of the windows was open. Then we had to shove our arms through the glass opening near the countertop. Fortunately, the draw was quick and painless.
After everyone was finished with the blood draw, I asked the students where we should go next.

“Surgery.”

We were taken to another room where we were asked to lie down on a table while the doctor attached suction cups to our chests, and clamps to our ankles and wrists. Everything was attached to scary looking wires. The doctor pushed some buttons on a machine nearby, and soon she had a paper readout. I raised my eyebrows and looked at her.

“Normal.”

Our last stop was on the ground floor. I was taken by the doctor to a table behind a curtain and was ordered to pull my shirt up. She then gave me an ultrasound. I asked my classmates the reason for this particular procedure.

“Your liver.”

Ahh. Now why didn't I think of that?