Being in china has really hit my health, I am nearly three months in now and I am on my fourth cold, I only got food poisoning once which was not too bad, an ear infection, lots of sore throats and coughs and have lost six kilograms. The worst thing has been the ear infection, I woke up one morning early to cover a friends class and took some cocodamol as my ear was a bit sore, by the end of the two hour class my ear was so painful I was a shivery nervous wreck, I had to cancel the classes for the rest of the day and go to hospital. The doctor stuck a few things in my ear and sent me to the pharmacy to get some medicine, which did not help, I got some weak antibiotics and a paracetamol based painkiller that was pretty much just homeopathy. I was very grateful mum had given me a ten pack of cocodamol which I hoped would last me til the antibiotics kicked in the next day. I don’t know what was happening inside my ear but it felt like the pressure was building up and up and the pain was tremendous, sleeping was pretty much impossible, the cocodamol would give me about twenty or thirty minutes every four hours. After the morning and the painkillers had run out I was escorted back to the hospital to try and get it sorted out, this seemed to involve never ending waiting, followed by walking from room to room and waiting some more. This was made all the more worse by all the stares that being western attracts, and the weird way that Chinese hospitals operate, when waiting to see a doctor, you don’t wait outside the room, you walk straight in and put your form on the doctor’s table, while he is seeing a patient, and so do about 6 other people. Really annoying when you want to see a doctor and when you are being seen by one. After all this waiting around and getting inspected by doctors and fellow patients nothing was helped, I went home with some more useless medicine and spent the whole night up in agony. I remember at some point getting up and going to the toilet, half way through I started to black out though and the next thing I remember I just made it back to my bed and lay down, as I got my vision back I started to hear a funny noise in my ear that didn’t go away, after about fifteen minutes I realized that it wasn’t in my ear, I cautiously got up and walked back to the bathroom to investigate. For some reason, when I blacked out half way though peeing I decided to take the shower hose out of it’s holding, put it in the sink and turn the tap on, before making it to my bed to crash out. Funny what two days without sleep can do to you. In the morning I started laying my head on my pillow bad ear down, after a while there was a funny noise and a bit of movement and then blood started coming out of my ear. Back to hospital, and after 4 hours of walking from room to room getting blood tests, seeing doctors and sitting down waiting with my head in my hands I was told I needed an IV drip, I didn’t really want this but eventually agreed because nothing could really be worse than the pain I was already in. I was then told I couldn’t have it until it had been okayed with the school, so I had to go back home and wait. When this was done we made our way back to the hospital for IV, when we got there they told us the IV had just finished for the day, so we went to the emergency room, where we could sort out IV, this however, involved more walking around the hospital, waiting in hallways and random rooms and seeing funny doctors. We did finally, however, make it to the IV room. A great big open space with over a hundred chairs and all kinds of different people, some looked close to death and others looked perfectly healthy, IV in China is perfectly normal treatment for a cold.
After the IV I got home and fell straight asleep for the whole night, my ear continued to bleed for a few days and I felt pretty weak for quite a while. I kept having IV everyday for a few days and eventually the pain went away. My hearing however, did not come back, and after 5 weeks I went to see a doctor friend of a friend to try and see if it was recovering properly and if my ear would ever get better. Being a friend of a friend there wasn’t any of the joy of endless waiting around busying from room to room to wait more, and it was only after a fifteen minute wait that Doctor Hu let us in to his tardis, I mean room, and after an inspection prescribed me some more medicine. Some of the worst tasting drinks I have ever had and nose drops, funny stuff but they did the job, after about a week or so my hearing got better and I started to feel and interact normally. Amazing what difference having one ear out of action does to you, I was constantly mistaking what people were saying, not following conversations properly and whenever walking with someone having to jump around them to make sure they were on my right hand side, which everyone found very funny.
