The Hospitals

DISCLAIMER: Long story ahead!!!

This already happened some while ago, but I had to wait for the happy ending before posting it. As Lacey had not been feeling well, the Lindeman family, consisting of Aaron, Leslie, and their little 18 month year old, James, had invited us over for the extended weekend to stay with them in their modern western apartment. So on Friday the 9^th of September, Aaron picked us up and took us to their place. The complex is appropriately named the Riverside Baroque Palace, for indeed it seemed palatial, though whether the functionality beneath the façade was as grand is the subject of another post.

When we walked in the doors, everything was made of what seemed to be giant slabs of marble. The right side of the entry way was an imitation gold-gilded grating, wrought in the shapes of vines and leaves. The same floral motif was in the corner of every slab of stone in the house, those of the floor inlaid with white and the walls with black to show the pattern. Every room had an individual thermostat control and the room was lit using hidden lights in the receded alcoves of the moldings.

We were placed in the guest bedroom, which also has its own private full bath. The king-sized bed was immensely comfortable, especially after the petrified pallets I’ve been sleeping on in the dorms. Perhaps the change that was most noticeable was that we could not hear a thing from inside the room; it was absolutely quite. Thus enjoying all of these comforts we felt we had regained some semblance of normalcy, which to a pregnant women is worth gold.

We stayed with them for the weekend, including Monday the 12 of September, which was the Mid Autumn Festival (中秋节 [Zhōngqiū jié]) so I did not have classes. The Lindemans had offered for Lacey to stay with them for the rest of the week until they left on vacation for Malaysia. With Lacey still feeling so unwell we took the offer, and I returned to campus for classes. We planned for me to come perhaps every other day and get her on Friday the 16^th of September to come back to campus. I should also mention a little about Leslie Lindeman. She was an OB/GYN nurse for 6 years, had been sick for 20 weeks with her first pregnancy, and is currently 6 months pregnant with her second baby, so she has been in a better position than anybody to empathize with how Lacey is feeling.

It was while I was back at campus and Lacey at the Lindeman’s that she had a particularly bad day. She had been throwing up a lot and on the verge of passing out the whole day. At one point when she had gone to get some food, she just laid down on the kitchen floor and didn’t move for hours. Leslie saw this and after having Lacey with them for a while realized that she was only getting about 300-400 calories of food a day, and at best half a liter of water. I get a call from her saying that in her professional and personal opinion she was quite concerned about Lacey and suggested we go to the doctor. Up until this point, we were very uncertain about where to draw the line regarding her health. Everyone keeps saying that pregnancy is hard and miserable and that often you just have to suffer through it until time heals you, which left us at a loss to determine when too much was actually too much. Apparently we had reached that point.

Leslie set up an appointment at Beijing Family United International Hospital for the very next day. Lacey, Leslie and myself went to the OB clinic. They ran all of the tests standard to a first prenatal checkup, which yielded several results. One, and most important, the baby was healthy. During the ultrasound we got to see its tiny body and see its heart beating. Second, and also important, according to the urinanalysis Lacey was not in extreme dehydration, though she did need fluids. Third, and very distributing was that Lacey had lost 22 lbs since getting pregnant. I think that just about anyone will tell you that such weight loss is not good at all for a pregnant woman. My sister, who was very sick during her first pregnancy, at the most lost 12 lbs.

The reaction of the doctor is very telling about China. There are several foreign doctors that work in the clinic, but it just so happened that the only doctor on call when we made the appointment was a 73-year-old Chinese woman. She had studied at Columbia medical school, so she supposedly had western training and goodness knows that in her tenure she’s probably seen it all. Upon discovering the huge weight loss, she was a little startled too, but did not do anything about it. So at the end of the checkup, I asked if we could possibly get some nausea medicine. The doctor said, “That’s not necessary, she just needs more food and water.” I retorted, “Every time she drinks or eats she throws up.” “Well then just make sure to drink and eat more.” She says. Explaining that such was not possible and that we would like some nausea medicine, the doctor obstinately refused, saying that it is bad for the baby.

The idea that medicine, practically of any kind, is bad for the baby dates back to traditional Chinese medicine. The Chinese are also more inclined to putting the needs of the baby before the health of the mother. Leslie, based on her experience in baby doctoring, was a little alarmed at this. She had her own checkup the next day with an American doctor, and explained Lacey’s condition and asked if there was some part of modern medicine that we were missing that would have led to the doctors reaction. Leslie’s doctor was frankly shocked and said that under those circumstances she would have had Lacey on an IV and with nausea medicine before leaving the clinic. We just lucked out by getting the only rock-stubborn doctor on the whole staff that refuses to give nausea medicine, and issue which is apparently going to be brought up with the board.

These discoveries are all good and well and the obvious correct choice was to see another doctor that would agree to getting Lacey on an IV, but when you have to figure out how to do so without insurance coverage, the situation gets messy. The estimated cost would be about $100 USD per hour with a potential stay of 24 hours to ensure healthy vitals. What this ended up leading us to was going to a Chinese hospital. Perhaps it goes without saying that the disparity between Western hospitals and Chinese is none too small. Have you ever heard those stories of people coming to China for cheap medicine? Well… there’s a reason it’s cheap. We had a member from our local church coming to help us translate and our situation was further improved because he already knew a doctor who worked at the hospital. So we arrived and began the line up.

Go to the basement to register. Go to this window to get your hospital card. Go up to the 6^th floor to see the doctor. We saw the doctor and after reviewing Lacey’s tests they said, “Well, it looks like nothing is wrong!” This time though, we were a little more insistent that something needed to be done. Thankfully they were swayable, and they prescribed a three-time treatment of IV liquids to rehydrate her. We asked how much it would be… the doctor said that for the first day, they would do two bags, so the two bags plus the syringe would be about 50 RMB (about $8 USD). We asked three times again just to be sure we had heard correctly. Comparing this to the international hospitals cost we were obviously satisfied and relieved.

The line up continued. Go back to the basement. Go to the pharmacy desk. (I think that the hospital system has undertones of the ration lines they always formed during the pre-communism invasions, and even thereafter.) At the pharmacy line, you buy your own IV bag and syringes, and then you are responsible to see that you get them to the right place for someone to plug you in. That took a little while but we found the IV sector, for lack of better phraseology. I was reminded of an airport terminal. There were rows and rows of chairs for people to sit in with the only distinguishing characteristic from and airport gate being that each chair had an IV bag post attached to it. For those in critical conditions they had cots and gurneys, but I assure you, they were not fickle about where those were placed. So we found an open seat out in the hall.

So that was what Lacey got to do for four hours that day. The next two days were two hours each. By the time she had finished the IV treatments her color had improved dramatically and her temperament got better as well. Though she continued to struggle with morning sickness, she is now at week 14 and coming out of the worst of it. Few people have the… opportunity (if that’s fair to say) to go to a hospital while overseas, and to have gone to a Chinese hospital is icing on the cake. The collection of war stories we will be able to tell this child are quickly mounting.