Inpatient Clinic

So today marked my first full day in the inpatient clinic at the hospital, and I have to say that things here are completely different. That doesn't really surprise me -- if you have to stay at the hospital, then you're almost necessarily sicker than someone who doesn't. I'd seen people in pretty bad shape come into the clinic -- folks who probably would have been in an assisted living facility in the US, but were being taken care of by family here in China.

Upstairs, though -- I'm observing on the 8th floor instead of the 2nd -- there's an incredible range of health and functionality. Just today, I saw a woman who was ready to go home, who had virtually no signs of her stroke a couple of months ago. Later that day, I saw her cruising by the door to the ward I was in, smiling and laughing. I saw a 38-year-old man who was in thanks to an aggravation of his symptoms from a stroke four years earlier. He didn't look happy to be there. I saw four people on supplemental oxygen, and two on NG (nasogastric) tubes because they had no gag reflex and had to have food delivered directly into their stomachs so they wouldn't choke on it. A man in his sixties cried because he was, the instructor told me, afraid of getting needled. (See, TheDiscourser? It's not just your wife.)

Hopefully, you're getting the idea that as varied as things were in the clinic downstairs, the inpatient wards were five times that upstairs.

Let me give you an idea of what things look like. The main hallway is kind of dark -- about half the lights are out at any given time, though I think they're turned off rather than burned out. And like a lot of buildings in China, the ceiling is pretty low -- probably 2.5 meters, rather than the 10 feet (3 meters) that we're used to in the US. Each ward -- there are maybe 25 wards on this floor without counting -- has four beds in it, all lined up along one wall underneath a strip that has jacks for power and -- I think -- oxygen, and maybe something else. I'll look again tomorrow. Along the opposite wall, maybe 2 meters from the foot of the beds, are chairs, and maybe another bed, where there is invariably a family member for each patient, maybe two or even three. So in a full room, you're looking at maybe ten people in the room, plus the doctor (or doctors) and any students there to watch.

It has a definite 1960s feel to it, down to the nurses who wear those little squared-off caps. You could almost smell the boiled cabbage, except that it's not boiled cabbage here, it's thin congee (rice porridge) and stir-fried vegetables, at least it was this morning. But it came by on a big cart, with family members coming out to collect the food in their own containers. The dedication shown by families here is just... well, I think I keep on talking about it. I'm impressed by their spirit and devotion.

Patients -- or rather, their family members -- supply their own needles, which are kept on the table by the bedside. Each patient gets needles twice per day -- once in the morning, where they get body acupuncture that is somewhat specific to their symptoms and condition, and once in the afternoon, when they get a more-or-less standard combination of three points, inserted bilaterally. In between, they also get a five-minute session of cupping, usually along the back-shu points on either side of the spine (but sometimes also in a problem area, like an arthritic knee or a painful shoulder). There's always food in the rooms -- the Chinese have a healthy obsession with food -- and it's surprisingly social, considering the reason people are there.

Anyhow, it's a new and different atmosphere, and I'm once again enjoying it, even if I have moments where I feel like a little duckling following the doctor around, listening to her lectures (and translations), and (more rarely) answering her questions. The time seems to go by quickly since there's much less standing around, and there's the doctor's room to retreat to on the rare occasions when there's time to kill.

So we'll see how this goes. Yet another look into the way they treat medicine here... always fascinating.