"dear leewen, please excuse comrade ingebretson from work today. she is very sick and needs two days bedrest. --doctor wang, shi li hospital"

well, that's not exactly what the note said, but it did say that "comrade ingebretson" needed two days bedrest. yes, in my efforts to increase my familiarity with qingdao, i decided to take an all-day field trip to one of qingdao's top hospital's emergency rooms.
on thursday night i went out for my usual evening of bowling and beer drinking. i came home around midnight, and began to feel a little nauseous. at first i thought it might be from drinking beer, which i found a little surprising since i hadn't drunk more than one qingdao beer (not known for high alcoholic content) nor had i eaten anything particularly unusual or unsanitary that day. i will spare you all of the unnecessary graphic details, but i basically think i came down with a particularly nasty case of the stomach flu. i didn't get any sleep thursday night, and dan decided to take me to the hospital early next morning, mainly because i was unable to keep any water down. we got to the hospital around 6:45 am, and walked in to a darkened lobby with no sort of staff in any kind of attendence. we went to the second floor to see if the international clinic was open (it wasn't) and ran into another patient who told us to go to the 6th floor. we arrived at the 6th floor to find a lit desk, a sign that said "nurses station" and of course, no nurses. dan went off to find a nurse while i squatted on the floor because there were no chairs or any sort of seats in the waiting area. finally a nurse came out and told us that we could wait for the international clinic to open at 8 (over an hour) or go to the chinese emergency room. we went to the emergency room, which turned out to be a room, with two somewhat dingy examining tables and two desks. the doctor came in and asked me what my symptoms were, and then pressed on my stomach and asked me where it hurt. he then wrote up some notes and my medications, and told me what he was going to give me through an i.v. now, if medication names are slightly incomprehensible in english, they were completely incomprehensible in chinese, so i just nodded and smiled and hoped that he didn't just say he was going to inject toxic waste into my veins.
another note about our hospital is that they are run by the chinese communist party, which means that it is staffed by fairly hostile beligerent staff who have better things to do than explain hospital procedure to ignorant foreigners. the hospital, unlike american hospitals, was pay-as-you-go, which meant that while i was getting my exam, a nurse came in to yell at us for not having payed the registration fee or picked up any forms(11 yuan, about $1.25). after we managed to let her know that a)i spoke chinese but was not about to leave the examination table, and b) dan was willing to go but didn't speak any chinese, she sighed a heavy sigh and grabbed dan's arm to go and get me registered. when we got back, it was time for the nurse to escort dan off again to the pharmacy and buy my medicines. meanwhile, a nurse escorted me to one of the rooms in the emergency ward where they would administer my i.v. the room turned out to be straight out of the 50s, a bare white room with four metal frame beds in a row, all with dingy (though not unsanitary) cotton bedding. above each bed was a string to pull to call a nurse, and next to each bed was a table and an i.v. stand. the nurse put me in the bed by the window. i went to go to the bathroom, which had the hygenic standards of a cheap restaurant. the toilets were dirty and there was no toilet paper. the sink only had cold water and no soap, and on one side there was a trough filled with dirty mops. on the whole, it was not a bathroom that inspired confidence. back in my room, the nurse hooked me up to the i.v. with only minor difficulty (she missed my first vein), and then left me and dan.
we were soon joined however, by a woman of about 60 and her somewhat senile elderly mother who was put in the bed next to me. at first she said in a loud, exaggerated voice, LOOK MOTHER, FOREIGNERS. LOOK AT HER HAIR. FOREIGNERS ALL HAVE DIFFERENT HAIR LIKE THAT. the mother seemed confused, and said that we looked different. the woman responded, WELL OF COURSE THEY'RE DIFFERENT, THEY'RE FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. HE'S FROM XINJIANG OR SOMEWHERE LIKE THAT (an autonomous region of china with a turkish ethnic minority). then she asked dan if i was his wife. dan looked confused, so then she tried out fiancee, and finally girlfriend, and dan said that i was. some more people came into the ward, and the woman said SHH, FOREIGNERS, YOU NEED TO BE QUIET BECAUSE A FOREIGNER IS SICK. then she asked dan what was wrong. dan managed to communicate that it was my stomach, and she gave a knowing tut tut and told him that i needed to eat more carefully. she then read my chart and told dan that one side effect of my medication was dry mouth, and he needed to give me some water. when she found out we didn't have any cups, she again was horrified. HOW WILL YOU TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES?? YOU NEED TO GET A CUP IMMEDIATELY! she hurried dan out and several minutes later they came back with a paper cup and two bottles of water. dan opened a water bottle and was about to pour when the woman again got really agitated and said WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING? YOU CAN'T GIVE HER COLD WATER, IT'S BAD FOR THE STOMACH. SHE NEEDS WARM WATER!(there is a belief that cold water gives people stomach aches, and all water needs to be at least luke warm). at this time i stopped feigning sleep and woke up and drank some luke warm water, and i was actually very grateful to the woman because i was very thirsty. when the woman found out i spoke more chinese than dan did, she began her round of questioning all over again. when she found out we mainly ate out instead of at home, she again tsk tsked, basically telling us that we had brought misfortune upon ourselves. all in all, it was like having a somewhat overbearing grandmother around taking care of me, which was occasionally exasperating but mostly nice.
another highlight of my 12 hours in the room was one time after i threw up, i called in the nurse and told her. she told me to save my bucket of vomit(it was a byob, or "bring your own bucket" emergency room) to show the doctor. (i'm not trying to be too graphic, but it's part of the story, so bear with me a moment) i had taken some pepto-bismol, a bright pink stomach medication, and my vomit was similarly colored. the doctor took a look and was incredibly horrified. "what did you eat!!??" she yelled at me, and i tried to explain that i had taken a medicine at home to prevent vomiting. the doctor took another look and said, "i don't know what that is, but never take it again. if you get sick, just come here immediately" and then walked out. meanwhile, everyone else in the ward came over to take a look and add their own versions, of "what were you thinking," "trying to poison yourself" "how unnatural" etc. then a little bit later when i tried to suck on a vitamin c candy to get the vomit taste out of my mouth, the grandmother figure caught me and said LOOK WHAT YOU'RE DOING NOW! DIDN'T YOU HEAR THE DOCTOR? SHE SAID NOT TO EAT ANY STRANGE FOODS, WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO YOURSELF? YOU DON'T NEED TO TAKE ANY VITAMIN C, IT'S IN THE I.V. STRANGE FOODS LIKE THIS, NO WONDER YOU'RE SICK.

on the whole, when i wasn't sleeping it was a fairly interesting 12 hours.