A few days ago I noticed some redness and swelling on my leg. Like a bug bite gone haywire. Or a zit, but one you can't pop. Oh, well. It will go away. Right?
No. It won't. In fact, it will get bigger and redder and be on the back of my leg where a) I can't really see just how bad it's gotten and b) it gets in the way of, oh, sitting.
After a few days of hemming and hawing (no one wants to travel an hour and spend a thousand+ kuai to see a doctor — but it's the weekend and I don't speak Chinese, knocking a lot of local Chinese hospitals out of the running), I decide it's time to suck it up and go to the ex-pat clinic.
Had I only done it three days sooner...
So, I now have a full-fledged skin infection. Whee! And there's this big, nasty, warm lump that hurts because it's all swollen and stuff. My thighs might be a bit on the thunder side, but the skin isn't supposed to stretch that far.
The nice British doctor gives me a prescription for antibiotics and tells me of the swelling doesn't go down in a couple of days, then I should go to the ER and have the thing lanced. (Like popping a REALLY big zit.)
The MD told me I could take paracetamol (acetaminophen) for the pain. I've found Brits tend to use paracetamol loosely — ibuprofen, paracetamol, tomato, tomahto. I have ibuprofen. We're good.
Off I go. I take my antibiotics and go to work this morning. And it hurts. Dear sweet baby Jesus, does it ever hurt. And I've read the drug facts: talk to your doctor before combining with an SAID (i.e., ibuprofen). Me and Google discover that the SAIDs have been known to react with the same class of drugs as the antibiotic I'm on and cause seizures (although not ibuprofen with this antibiotic specifically, and certainly not in all patients, but still). So no pain meds for this stalwart woman. I have a meeting a lunch so I don't even try to find paracetamol at lunch. (I am beginning to see all my mistakes... Are you?) By the end of a day of teaching, it's all I can do to not burst into tears.
I talk to a colleague, print put my forms, and decide I can't take it anymore. I'm taking myself to an ER to get this mother-f%*%#¥£%# lanced.
I go home. Drop off my bike. Pick up my insurance card. Do, in fact, burst into tears when the first two phone numbers I find don't work; one does not head off into the greater Beijing unknown with pre-planning. Head across town to the "International" (but still Chinese) hospital. And then...
I will say, the nurses and the doctor have pretty good English. Certainly far better than my Chinese (but that's not hard considering the state of my Chinese). Doctor says, "Oh yeah, that's bad, but I can't lance it yet." she says this while I have burst into tears from a day of pent-up pain. I guess because it's still a hard mass, all the icky won't come out, so you have to wait until it gets all soft and gooshy.
But maybe I have diabetes! Go have blood drawn and we'll check your blood sugar. Since I haven't eaten since lunch, it's pretty much fasting blood sugar which is what you want. Yay for me. And we'll count your "red" blood cells (Chinese have a hard time distinguishing between the words "red" and "white" as anyone who has tried to order a glass of red wine in a Chinese restaurant (in China) knows.
Well, my blood sugar is all nice and low where we want it (yay for me) and after half an hour we learn that I have an elevated white blood cell count. Well, duh. We know I have an infection, right? You've seen the massive lump on my leg! Right?
So, the doctor swabs me down with some iodine (and actually gives me the rest of the almost-empty bottle — try to get that in a U.S. hospital) and tells me it will soak into my skin as it dries. OK, cool beans.
But, the antibiotics I'm on aren't enough! You need IV antibiotics! Throw out those others and come back twice a day for three days!
Um. Exsqueeze me?
That is NOT going to happen. It took me about an hour/hour and a half to get here. And I have one of those J-O-Bs, you know?
Oh, we'll, she can give me a "certificate" (prescription) to take to my local hospital. But (sorry, girly bits being discussed) she can't give me a prescription for Diflucan in case I end up with a yeast infection after she doses me with all these antibiotics. Any normal person (OK, I added the normal, but it was implied) will not get a yeast infection from six measly doses of IV antibiotics. Lady, I don't know how they do in your country, but where I come from, the IV antibiotics are the big guns. They're the "You have a heart murmur and we're petrified you'll sue for malpractice if you end up with a heart infection after we slice your mouth open so we're going to kill every bit of bacteria in your body once and for all (even the good bacteria)." That was the first time I got a yeast infection, and I've gotten one with IV antibiotics ever since. So maybe my flora aren't as strong as they should be... they've been killed before. She was adamant, and I told her I hoped I didn't have to come back in three days and tell her, "I told you so." Yes, I actually said that.
Did I mention I hadn't had dinner yet? We're at about 8pm at this point.
At this point, there doesn't seem to be much I can do. Can you tell the doctor, "Bu yao"? If you can, you should probably be a lot healthier, more well-fed, and in less pain than I am. Do I tell her I don't want her stinking antibiotics. Does she know something my other doctor doesn't? Can I eat now?!?
So I go back down the hall to give a piece of paper to the nurse who sends me back to the cashier's window (where I've been two or three times before, although the only money I forked over was ¥5 for my ID card (with RFID chip)).
And this is when the next reality sinks in. They mean IV antibiotics, not just a shot in the arm. Not only does this take time, but I have horrible veins. Not as bad as some, but bad enough that I doubt I could ever be an IV drug user (if I were so inclined). Typically, the nurses need to get the doctor to start an IV after they've left track marks ups and down my arms. Even then, the doctors sometimes need two tries in my hands (of all painful places). And she wants me to do this six times?!?
But, I go to the pharmacy (limping all the way) where I am handed six baggies of IV drip (even though I'm only having one dose in this hospital). I go back to the nurses' station where I am led into a room (that at least has curtains and is currently empty). She wanders off to get the IV cart and I am left to peruse my medicine. I have my (free?) bottle of iodine, the aforementioned IV saline bags plus 10 bottles of something else that go in the IV bag (but are not the medicine as far as I can tell), some antibiotic ointment (to rub on said cyst after I let the iodine dry — four times a day, and some pain reliever.
Hmm. What's in the pain reliever? All the writing is in Chinese. I can find someone to translate it tomorrow, but why not see if the blister pack tells me something... No. Sometimes the paper insert has English. Ah, yes, here it is. Acetaminophen (good... no seizures) and oxycodone.
Wait. Back up.
She won't write me a prescription for Diflucan (flucanazole) because it's dangerous and I guess the ONE TABLET dosage is too much to trust me with. However, she will calmly (and without encouragement on my part) hand over TEN tablets of a schedule ii controlled substance that is addictive and a morphine derivative. I would have been happy with plain old paracetamol that I didn't have to go anywhere else to buy.
Granted, I was in tears in her office because my leg hurt so much. Do not underestimate the power of a white woman in (obviously legitimate) tears.
Then the nurse came in. I told her she probably wanted my right hand (I don't think anyone has been successful getting an IV in my left hand and rarely (if ever) in my arms). So she takes my left hand and sticks me fairly painlessly. She rooches around with the needle for a second and then turns on the tap, whereupon a bubble starts to form under the skin because she really wasn't in my vein. There goes the "Best IV Insertion" award for her.
Now she heads for my right hand, slaps me around a little, and tries again. This time it hurts more, but she finds the vein. (I decided to skip the "I told you so" with her because she seemed genuinely sorry that she messed up the first time.) Drip, drip, drip, and I am left to sit for 30 minutes.
I return to this very blog post you are now reading (or maybe gave up on half an hour ago). While typing, this is what I figured out.
I went to the emergency room because pain was so bad I couldn't wait the 2-3 days my first doctor told me to wait. Upon seeing the amount of pain I was in, the second doctor informed me that it was still too soon to lance my cyst and embarked on a whole slew of new tests (all of which involved me hobbling back and forth from room to room and sitting on chairs and increasing my pain level). After discovering I did still have the infection I only began treatment for yesterday, she changed my treatment to one that would be far, far more intrusive to my life. Then she gave me serious pain medicine. All of which took me two and a half hours (or so) in the hospital plus the hour and a half to arrive at said hospital. And without dinner.
She could have (go with me here) told me it was too soon to lance, given me the pain meds, and told me to continue the treatment I already had (which is not so radically different from hers — antibiotics or antibiotics), and come back in 2-3 days if it has gotten worse or squishy enough to lance. That would have been maybe an hour (even with the blood test to see if I developed this cyst because of diabetes).
I mean, I'm not a doctor, but...
When they finally told me I could go, they told me I didn't have to pay. (Wha-what?) Maybe they have direct-billing with my insurance company? (And I will say it was only about ¥450 compared to ¥1600 at the ex-pat place... which is a bargain unless you value your time.) My form wasn't even completely filled out because I don't know my bank's sort code and I have no idea what name they used because the school set it up for me. I could be Scott C or C Scott or Socff Crlinoline for all I know. But, actually, I owe them my 20% co-pay, not the other way around, so if then never find me...
And then, at 9:15 (after limping around the block because the south gate was closed), I found my way to the Restaurant Formerly Known as Outback (Seriously, Outback closed and someone bought the whole thing; the Bloomin' Onion is now a "Burst Onion" and the side salad is no longer part of an entrée, but it is otherwise exactly the same.) It was (fortunately for everyone involved, but mostly me) still serving food.
After dinner, I only had to wait about 10 minutes for a cabbie who wasn't a thieving asshole (but that's another post for another day), and at about 10:30, I was returned to my humble abode. I still have a bubble of liquid under the skin in my left hand, and my leg does still hurt, but I've taken one of my Percocet, and I no longer care quite so much.
And tomorrow is another day.
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
Location:Beijing, China
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