Hospital Trip

For the week i've been having trouble hearing, my left ear has been really uncofortable and everything sounds like its underwater. Very annoying! After mentioning it to a few of the teachers Jenny said she would help me go to the hospital to have it looked at.

I taught my first two classes on wednesday and then met jenny, the schools driver had volunteered to take us to the hospital as Jenny didn't have a car, although he wouldn't actually get paid for it!

We drove down a backstreet in the town before turning into a building site with girders and steel bars lying in the road, we squeezed through and parked up surrounded by building ditritus and rubbish. Walking around the corner towards a very dilapidated looking building I was a bit worried, and walking through towards the front entrance (we came in the back way to find parking) I realised the hospital was actually having a major refit and so would apparently be quite nice when it was finished. Due to the extensive building works throughout the hospital it was filled with even more dust and noise, building materials and rubbish than usual and that, coupled with the sheer number of people there waiting and walking around didn't help my worries about the doctors competency.

I waited in a queue in the new building which was just having the electrics wired in but was already in full use, this was tricky as they only accepted chinese names but I needed to use my English name for insurance reasons! I was issued with a membership card, health book, receipt and paid the £2.50 registration fee and they managed to very slowly type my name in and just like that i was registered at the hospital. Jenny then called a guy she knew to help us out!

Next we needed to find this man's office so we went up some stairs and at the advice of some staff kept going up, until the stairs just stopped at a door barricaded from the other side with random office things! Guessing this wasn't the way we went down one and walked along the corridor and after asking again found a tiny set of stairs between two toilets that led to the top floor.
Jenny said we were close and started reading the door signs, the first I read was for the VP of the hospital, the CEO, and then the director, Jenny knocked on the next door marked education and science officer and went in. 

Following her in I met a middle aged man who asked us to follow him and told Jenny he would find me a 'good doctor', in Chinese of course, nobody spoke English! 

Back down to the 3rd floor we walked straight past an electronic queue and a line of people outside a room and turned into an examination room with three chairs all with doctors examining patients in. When this guy entered and said a few words the chosen doctor told his patient to get out of the chair and wait in the corner, and pointed for me to sit down, the head guy then left us to it.
The doctor saw me immediately and had a look in my ear, diagnosing it as just blocked and dirty he said a few joking things about foreigners and told me not to get water in my ears when I shower, as if I did it on purpose! 
He then grabbed a vacuum sucker similar to those used by dentists and before I knew what he was doing stuck it on my ear drum! My god was that painful! Noticing my face he stopped and said he would go a bit slower, but that it was the worst he had seen. It really hurt and after that first time although he tried to be gentle it was still painful. 
It was over in around 2 minutes and he wrote a few things in my booklet and off we went to the room we started in. There we paid £3.80 and queued up for some drugs he had prescribed, anti bacterial meds of some sort it turns out after googling the name, the only thing in all the medicine that was in English.

All in all the whole thing had take around half an hour, most of that walking around this big hospital trying to find where to go! and around the hospital are houses overlooking the open windows, and no privacy in treatment or diagnosis really either.

In the car I asked Jenny about her friend and it turns out they are in the same political party! There are more than just the communist party it turns out, they all support the main party but have slightly different ideas, I didn't want to go too into it but last weekend at the meeting she had met him, told him about my problem and he had invited me in as a favour to Jenny, who seems to have quite some influence around here! The final straw was that what I paid was just for the meds I was given, the treatment itself was done as a favour to the head doctor by the doctor who did it! It really is all about who you know here, The Hospital would have taken all day had I not gone with someone who knew someone important, I owe Jenny a big favour! And she must owe the head doctor, who owes the doctor who did it, so crazy! 

My ear still hurts more than a day later but at least I can hear, I think he just bruised the ear drum, it is pretty sensitive! 

Tomorrow is April fools and the students all seem to have it in for me! Oh dear! Nevermind, we will see! I wonder if I can think of any good tricks for them.... A Surprise test maybe?

Tomorrow evening the students are doing some sort of show so I think I will try and watch that, will take photos if I can! 

Next week is Tomb Sweeping day on Tuesday so the students have sun, mon, tues off school, and so I don't have to teach! But it seems that I may have to teach mondays class on Saturday instead! Damnit! Even so, I want to try to travel somewhere with the three day weekend we have, not quite sure where though, wenzhou doesn't seem to have that much to do but would still be nice to have a wander around maybe? Need to decide soon though and get some tickets! 
Had another chinese lesson today, difficult but if i put in the practise I hope I can improve quickly! and a real teacher is much more useful that rossetta stone, but two is better than one! 

Wan Shang Hao! (good evening)