During his three-day birthday party junket, Ted was coughing up a storm. We all chalked it up to just general unhealthiness due to sustained all night partying, but he wasn't able to sleep at night because the coughing was so intense and strong. We finally convinced him to go to the hospital, which proved to be an interesting adventure.
In China there are two levels of hospital--foreigner level, where the doctors have studied in America or some other industrialized country, the staff speak English and they charge Western prices or you can go to Chinese hospital, which is about what you would expect. Decent care if you are getting a basic service, no English and cheap, cheap, cheap! Ted called the Western hospital first and they wanted to charge him $200-450 for a consultation plus whatever services he required. What a rip off! He decided instead to brave the Chinese hospital and took one of our Beida office staff with him for assistance. Turns out he made the smart choice. He only paid 250 yuan total for his visit, which included consultation, chest X-ray plus prescriptions along with a diagnosis of lung infection. He got to keep his chest X-ray, which we eagerly inspected at the Bridge. I'm no doctor, but I've watched enough episodes of House, Grey's Anatomy and ER to diagnose a lung infection. His lungs were cloudy looking and full of what looked like spidery grit. Ick!
Ted is well on his way to recovery, he sounds great and is having less coughing bouts. They gave him two courses of antibiotics, so I told him to eat some yogurt to get some good bacteria back into his system. So far our group has not been the healthiest, so far we've had:
-Ted's lung infection
-David's kidney stone
-Nikhil's viral infection that required IV treatment
-Jenn went to the hospital last night for some kind of stomach issue, not sure what it was but she's out now (EDITED: It was acute pancreatitis)
-Laurie's knee is injured, but she's kind of a hypochondriac so I'm not sure what's up with that
-Various diarrhea/GI/upset stomach issues
-Phlegmy-ness thanks to Beijing
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