Chinese hospitals = wretched.

I have been pretty well fortified against culture shock since I've been here, but I met my match with the Chinese hospitals.

When reading this, keep in mind that I love China and appreciate almost everything about China, save this one matter. China doesn't do healthcare well. It is most likely the combination of the fact that because they have 1.3 billion people, and so the value of an individual lessens in the pragmatic long-term viewpoint of a nation, because they're a developing country as well as the problem that they just don't have the knowledge base to build a better healthcare system at this point.

Recently, my friend was diagnosed with something that could have been an appendicitis- but had mysterious symptoms that did not fit with her diagnosis. Day after day, she would return from the hospital more confused than the day before, usually grasping the test results and X-rays taken that day, because in China, your x-rays aren’t needed by the doctors for your medical records because medical records? Don’t exist.

She asked me to come with her to the hospital the day before her surgery for moral support, because she was little frightened. As I walked through the hospital, I realized that while I had been wary of the dismal hospitals, I had not been afraid. I should have been. Elderly people stared at us with vacant eyes, as they laid on the gray cold tiles, resting their head on the single piece of newspaper that served as their pillow, The hallways, “waiting rooms”- just a wider hallways with chairs- and parking lot of the hospital were lined with sickly people in various stages of decay. It was horrific.

As for the surgery, it went off without a hitch. The doctors did know what they were doing after all, though the language barrier had made things much more difficult and stressful. However, healthcare in China is not anywhere in the realm of healthcare in the US.

First of all, the concept of sterile is to China as dragons are to Americans: make- believe. There is a reason why Hepatitis B is an issue here. What are the implications of this? Forget sterile, basic standards of cleanliness is too much for traditional Chinese hospitals. One is lucky to walk into a hospital and not see a floor streaked with blood and vomit.

Within hours after the surgery, my friend was taken off of painkillers. She had been sliced open and had an organ removed and had no morphine, vicoden or even tylonel to surpress the quite substantial amount of pain she was in.

-She was not given nearly enough general anesthesia- she woke up while she was still in the operating room

and oh, insurance is completely worthless in China. They still make you pay everything upfront, and the insurance reimburses you afterward. So if you are hit by a car, and don’t have the 10,000 RMB on hand, you are pretty much doomed.

Basically, if I get seriously ill, I'm on a plane back to America. China wins this round.