I was ticked, sweating mad. I hadn’t walked for 20 minutes in my flip flops and flat feet to sit in this hole and wait. It was our day in the cultural exchange to learn about Traditional Chinese Medicine and I was sitting on a plastic chair in a hallway with the rest of the team…listening to the nonstop racket of old Chinese people getting the crap out of their lungs, really digging deep and rattling their fragile alveoli, and spitting it on the floor…splat. The sound of these monster loogies landing, rolling and picking up dust made some of us actually sick (Rusty? I like to bring up Rusty because he has an awesome story and is one of the leaders on the current World Race in Peru. Follow his blogs, go to the world race home page and look for Rusty Jackson’s crap).
The place smelled like a redneck bar (I have been in plenty of these), full of cheap cigarette smoke, but minus the redneck girls and the juke box. The floors had the same tile pattern as my elementary school (color schemed to camouflage puke?) and signs outside the doctor’s office were written in Chinese and awful (come on, someone in this country ought to know real English) English. I should have called in sick today (sometimes being a missionary/tourist feels like a full time job), just to avoid the hospital.
We had walked all the way from the hotel to this concrete structure. The buildings in this city were all memorials to ancient communist stereotypical architecture. All looked ready to absorb an atomic bomb, and an a bomb would have been mercy to this place. We had walked here…what happened to our bus? We had walked past the statues of lions and the tea shops, shops everywhere, the national pastime of China is shopping. We had arrived at this ‘hospital’ in a group and looked in the pharmacy. This pharmacy was full of herbs and leaves and I was looking for the eye of newt, the witches brew type stuff and to the western mind we were appalled at what the Chinese called medicine. For me, because of my 7 years earning a bachelor’s degree, I had at some point studied some alternative medicine and had written a term paper on it, in my Health Care Systems class, and I realize just a smidgen how much we really don’t know, so I don’t know about any of this CRAP (by the way, what a beautiful word). But when I wrote the paper the United States had spent WAY more on health care than any other country but were WAY down the list on actual health of its citizens, both longevity (length of life for all those outside of Boston) and quality of life, so really, what do we know about anything?
Well we came in and stared at all the ‘medicines’, and we stood around in a group and we got stared at like ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ by everyone else. Lynette, who I thought was just doing this ‘check up’ because she is in to all this weird stuff and is Chinese (I love Lynette, so I thought I could say this here), Lynette decided she was going to get a check up. Lynette was not feeling good and decided to let the doctors give some help.
While we stood around I decided to take a leak, drain it, squeeze the lizard, whatever it is called…urinate. Rusty and I took the adventure together, where in this decrepit building were we to wizz? Up the stairs and around the corner, follow your nose, it always knows. The ammonia was getting stronger so we knew we were on the trail. Then we walked into the dark room and emptied the contents of our bladders and complained to each other about the eye watering stink, it really burned the old retinas, this bacteria and protein/urea mix…and then ran out of the bathroom. In all the third world China had THEE most DEEsgusting bathrooms, and this hospital bathroom probably had not been cleaned in a FORTNIGHT! They can send a satellite to the moon but can’t clean a bathroom.
Now one issue that I have is I am always making assumptions. I had assumed we were going to be TAUGHT something. What I mean is, I thought we were going to have someone explaining stuff to us, and all I had done was pee in a crap filled trough. When was someone going to teach us something? At least explain where we were and what we were doing…or maybe, at least, answer some questions. But there I was, sitting in a chair, sweating mad, trying in vain to choose my attitude of joy but quickly falling to the default setting of anger and wondering just what the H E double hockey sticks were we doing? So, I hunted down our contact and asked, and realized to my CHAGRIN that this is exactly what we were doing. HMMM. After all these months out of the United States you would figure that some of my BUTTHEAD American attitude had worn off, right? Wrong.
Once I found out that there really wasn’t a plan, that we would make of this experience what we would, I said, in my big head, “fine, then I am going to get an appointment too”. I ran downstairs and got in line to make an appointment, finally arrived at the window and promptly realized I would need an interpreter. Our only interpreter was 3 floors up, so I smiled and nodded and ran up the three flights. On my way up the stairs I figured I needed some money, that is why they ignored me, because I didn’t ante up. I grabbed money from my ever diligent wife and ran back down the stairs and got in line again. This time I put money down, 7 quay or 1 dollar, and was handed a receipt and I ran back up the stairs. (One dollar to be seen by the doctor!)
I queued up again, sat on the plastic chairs with my receipt in hand and wondered what these witch doctors had up their sleeves. I don’t know about this HOCUS POCUS. I don’t understand chiropractic, but for the money I have never felt better, either. What would they diagnose? Well, my turn, I was being called in to the doctors office.
I sat down at the desk, with the interpreter next to me and made eye contact with the doctor. Do your best doc. The doctor waved smoke out of the room and stubbed his butt in an ash tray. I looked at his hands as he smiled and reached for my wrist. His hands were nicotine stained and his fingernails were yellow, his skin leathery. He put his hand on the pulse of my wrist and then he held my fingers, he looked me up and down and observed me, more intently than I observe women I don’t know, midgets, and fat guys. (and the look on his face said he was observing a fat guy)
He smiled and looked at me and said something in gibberish to the interpreter. “Are you tired?” my interpreter asked me. I nodded and said “yeah, I guess I am tired” was it my red face or the beads of sweat on my forehead?). I had done 420 pushups and 500 situps that morning, before walking for 20 minutes to this hospital (never mind drinking the awful Chinese beer and staying up late to read a great book and watch the Communist Propaganda channel). I had sat in the low hygiene hospital hall for half an hour before this meeting and had been in 14 countries in ten months. I had moved, or slept in 100 different places in that time. Living in community had just about made my head explode…in the Philippines my blood pressure was at something obscene like 160/90, and I was still trying to figure out how to be a husband, so yeah, I guess you could say I was a little tired. The lack of GOOD beer and GOOD coffee wasn’t helping any either. So, yeah, I guess I am a little tired.
The doctor said some crap about meditating, tai chi, losing weight, getting more sleep. I said to the interpreter, “so I need to eat more beef? I need to drink more beer? I need to take more naps?”
Her eyes opened wide. I said, again, “If I am tired, I guess I need some steak, some stout, some snooze time, huh? Maybe more coffee?”
So that is what I learned in my Traditional Chinese Medicine, get some exercise, eat better, learn to relax. Crap, I could have told you that…. Did I expect to hear that my health was something more than common sense? Maybe I was hoping for some miraculous magical mushroom to do that for me?
