Hospital in Shanghai
In any travels, you try your best not to have to learn anything about the local medical facility and emergency care. Unfortunately for Nick…we were forced to learn when we were in Shanghai. Looking back, we blame the $3 big bowl of lamb soup he had…my $3 bowl of pork was just fine – but then again, i have an iron stomach when in Asia (though i am quite sickly when i’m in North America).
So for the next 2 days, Nick was pretty much enjoying the view from the bathroom at the Royal Meridien. By the 2nd day, I was quite worried as it wasn’t getting better. so we decided to better head to a hospital (it was 10pm) before we fly out to Chengdu the next morning (flight at 8am).
I go downstairs, and through my broken mandarin – asked concierge, “where’s the closest hospital?”. MISTAKE. what anyone travelling should ask is ” Where’s the hospital for Expats or foreigners”. reason for this will become apparent…
Took Nick to the cab and got the cabbie to drive to this hospital. again, not sure if it’s right as my mandarin is spotty at best. Thankfully, I had a friend in Shanghai who I called in panic and she was meeting me at the hospital. the 3 of us go into, and my friend, let’s call her Mello, checked us in via her awesome fluent Mandarin.
the inside of this hospital is dark green in colour, fluorescent lighting. pretty dinghy. feel like you don’t want to touch anything because it just has this feeling of dirtiness to it.
We were told to sit in the waiting room for a bit. we chose the empty chairs as on the opposite side was this guy with a bloody head (looked like he was hit with a bottle). Then a nurse called Nick to take a sample and handed him a container. I stood outside the washroom in case Nick needed assistance. He calls out: do you have any kleenax or napkins? Me: er..no..isn’t there any inside? Nick: no.
ok….i trek over to the front and ask for any paper products they have. they shake their heads.
hmmm
Mello to the rescue, in any local person’s bag is a pack of kleenax for situations such as this. bad part, she only had 2 pieces left.
I handed it over to Nick and told him to use it wisely.
once that ordeal was done with – Nick was shown into a doctors room.
via very weak voice, Nick says: don’t let them stick me with any needles!!!
ok, got it.
Doctors come in, first thing he says: let’s hook him up to an IV.
Mello and I: NO.
if you look around the corner from the doctors office, you see a bunch of people sitting in chairs with IV bags hooked up to their arms. apparently that’s what they do in Asia.
again, via Mello fluency – she managed to get a doctor’s prescription for stomach upset resolution pills. We thanked the doctor, paid $20 in admin fee, and left.
Nick went back to sleep. I proceed to find him drugs.
there’s a happy ending to this story – Nick eventually recovered – 2 days later in Chengdu, but at least he was stable enough to be able to go to the airport and fly for 3 hours and settle in the Chengdu hotel. In between everything, he just passed out.
I thanked Mello before heading out of Shanghai. hopefully next time 1) Nick won’t eat any lamb 2) my Mandarin would be some what more decent 3) We’ll see her without any panic calls to go to some shotty dinghy hospital.
Whenever we talk about that incident now – Nick likes to exclaim: I can’t believe I got sick, and you didn’t. you were the one that bought the egg puff street food where the milk and egg batter has probably been sitting out in the sun all day long. and there were a box of puppies being sold right beside it.
me: yup. the egg puffs were delicious. and the puppies were super cute.