We’ve been trying to get back in the swing of things after the national holiday here in China, but we’ve hit some road bumps, mainly in the form of everyone getting sick. And it has only gotten progressively worse. Logan was sick right before the holiday, with sore throat, cough and what we think was Strep. I was sick during the holiday with some kind of nasty sinus infection that made Disney a lot less more magical. Alanna had a quick (thankfully) stomach bug right after we got back from the magic kingdom. And then there’s Abby. Our energetic bundle of joy seemed to have made it through the week of family sickness unscathed. She even made it back to school safely… for one day. And then the bottom fell out.
Abby woke up early last week with a fever, stomach pains and stuff coming out of her backside in rapid fashion. It seemed like she had gotten both what Alanna and I had. We kept her home from school the next day and gave her some of the medicines we’d brought from the States. Alanna was good like that. She had a giant list of all the things we’d need and a healthy supply of medicines for both us and the kids was high on that list.
By Wednesday, Abby was still at home and none of her issues had been resolved. We figured it might be more serious than we thought so we decided to take her to a doctor. Taking someone to a doctor in China, for us anyway, means just going to the hospital. Unfortunately, my one great fear in life is hospitals. Seriously. It’s a long story, which I’ll save for another time.
The kids are under Alanna’s insurance, so it made sense for her to take Abby to the doc. Thankfully, we have a connection with a few English-speaking nurses here at the local hospital. We even have their contact information. So, Alanna was able to get in touch with one of them and they could meet her at the hospital to help her through the process. Alanna got to the hospital and it was immediately crowded with 1 million people. OK, not that many, but it was mad busy. Alanna has some kind of special expat VIP service though. The nice nurse came and got my wife and daugther and took them to a nicer, much less crowded floor to see the doctor. The doctor of course spoke only Chinese, but the nurse translated. She was nice. He was not as nice. He immediately wanted a blood test, stool sample, the works. Alanna just wanted antibiotics. Alanna won that round and left with a plethora of drugs ranging from antibiotics to salt hydrating… things.
Abby is 6 years old. Abby is an American. Abby is used to her medicine tasting like bubblegum. They don’t do bubblegum in China. Abby could barely stomach anything that the doctor had given her. I thought she was just being a bratty child, so Alanna had me taste her medicine. Abby was not being a bratty child. Her medicines were all in powder form that you mix with water and then swig down. Her medicine tasted like chalk. Like… chalk with poop on it. Like chalk… with too much wasabi. Like chalk… with whatever nasty tasting thing pops into your mind at this moment. I was able to find some Gatorade at a store close by, so that made it slightly less nasty to drink with medicine. Like… chalk. Just chalk. Another day of this and she seemed to get a little better. At least her fever was gone. The stomach issues were there still, but less frequent. But they weren’t going away. And when she did have her stomach bouts, the poor girl was screaming in pain and was inconsolable. Alanna spoke with the nurse again and they decided to get a stool sample from Abby, then bring it to the hospital the next day. I oversaw the “sample getting”. I got it, we refrigerated it, then Alanna took it in the next day along with Abby. And, of course, the doctor rejected the sample because it wasn’t fresh. Like, 30 minutes fresh. Alanna got Abby something to eat while they were the hospital for round 2 in hopes that she would “go”, but no luck. She was brought back home, she went later, and Alanna rushed the fresh poo back to the hospital while I stayed at home with the kids. This was Saturday? Yes, Saturday. Oh, did I mention she had blood in her stool? Yeah, she had blood in her stool. Her parents were freaking out.
We got her results back at the beginning of the week and they didn’t look good. We were told she had “some kind of infection” and that if the antibiotics we were giving her weren’t working, that we should admit her to the hospital. Like, check her in, get her the good medicine through her arm type of admitting. This all came down while both of us were at work. Alanna talked to her colleagues and I talked to mine, trying to figure out the best course of action since we know very little about Chinese Hospitals. We are scared. Nervous. Worried. Whatever you want to call it, we were that. We would have been all those things back in the States, but they were magnified now that we were in China. We basically had two options – take her to the local hospital here in the city, or hop on some transportation and head to Hong Kong, where they have more English-speaking doctors and better facilities. We finally agreed that we needed something immediately, as Abby had lost all color and looked very dehydrated, even though we were trying to force feed her water and Gatorade. That something, we decided, was to take her to the local hospital. Sure, Hong Kong may have been better, but when we went to Disneyland there, it took us 4 hours to arrive, and we wanted Abby taken care of as soon as possible.
We left Logan at school and took Abby to the hospital on Tuesday right before Noon. Thankfully, we headed directly up to the VIP floor, where we waited patiently on the nice English-Speaking nurse. Once she arrived, we were all ushered into a small examination room where a Chinese doctor basically took some notes on her computer translated from our nurse as we told her about Abby’s condition. She agreed that Abby did indeed need to be admitted and told us to head to the VIP floor in the next building, which was Floor 13. Don’t worry, that number doesn’t really have any unlucky powers in our family, so we weren’t worried. About that anyway. First though, we needed to go to floor 3, to the Pediatric Ward, to check-in there.
I soon learned that the Pediatrics Ward was just another name for Hell. Literal Hell. Ok, not literal. No fire and brimstone, but Hell none the less. We were led into the area and immediately felt like were in an overcrowded medical refugee camp, thing, place. There were beds along the hallways, with children in them throwing up in buckets. There was a baby with needles sticking out of his head and an IV in his arm while his parents held him and walked around the lobby area. Thankfully, we were just there to check in. We were going to the VIP floor. Nothing to worry about. Remain calm. Our nurse led us back to a large multi-office area where we spoke with (I think) another doctor. She gave Abby the once over, asked us the exact same questions the other doctor asked, then printed out some admission forms for us to sign. They were all in Chinese, so our nurse translated them for us:
Form 1 – This hospital is very expensive. Treatment will be very expensive. You better pay up! Sign here.
Form 2 – Don’t bribe the doctor. Sign here.
Form 3 – Are you this child’s mother? Sign here.
With the paperwork out of the way, we were taken out of Hell. (I’m just gonna call the Pediatrics Ward “Hell” from now on as it is easier to type and is honestly a better fitting name for the area.) So, we were off to Floor 13. We were put in room 27, but there was a piece of paper taped over the 27 number beside our door that said 50, so we were in room 50. Don’t ask me, I don’t understand it either. The room was nice. Sparse, but nice. It is what you would expect for a nice private room in any hospital in the States. Abby was just settling in when some nurses came and said they needed to begin the IV process. Now we had tried to prepare Abby for this, so she wouldn’t be surprised. She understood they would have to stick her, maybe take some blood, and leave in a tube to give her the good medicine. Abby was already upset about it, as any 6-year-old who looked like she was dying would be, but it only got worse. WAAAAAY worse. In America, they just do the whole IV process right there in your room. Makes sense, right? I mean, that’s where your bed is, that’s where you will be lying and having the meds pumped in your body. So, of course, we thought they’d have her lie down there in bed and give her the IV. We were wrong. We were dead wrong. They explained to us that is not how they do things at the local hospital . They don’t do the IV procedure in your room. Oh no. Where DO they do the IV procedure you ask? Hell. They do it in Hell. I’m freaking out. Alanna is freaking out. Abby is freaking out. But we all put on our brave faces and accompany the nurses down to Hell. Again, we’re on Floor 13, Hell is on Floor 3. There are 10 million people at the hospital, and they all use the elevators at the same time. Waiting for the elevator to get to your floor takes 5 minutes or more. And then, you get on a small elevator with, no exaggeration, 15 other people. And then the elevator stops on EVERY. SINGLE. FLOOR. – where people get off, but of course more people get on, so it’s always crowded.
Back to Hell. There was that kid again, still puking in a bucket. Hey, there’s the baby with the needles sticking out of his head. We were led to what I guess can be called the Shot room. You know, the place where they would draw your blood, or give you a shot, or waterboard you. Whatever it takes, right? More freaking out continued as we walked into the small room. They had a rolling cart in the middle of it, with all their supplies, yeah, but on the shelf under the cart were all the used needles, in a bucket. Like 100s of them, used, bloody, whatever, poking out every which way but any way that was some kind of normal safety standard. And then there were the blood splotches on the floor. Fresh blood, mind you, not the week old darker brown stuff. Oh no, this was, “hey, this guy just bled out in the room” type of blood. There were two padded examination tables that I figured they would sit Abby on. Again, I figured wrong. They put her in an old wooden school chair in the middle of the room, not 2 feet from those damned used needles. Abby already had some tears streaming down her pretty face, and snot dripping from her nose as we began IV Attempt Number 1. Yes, this wasn’t the only attempt. Alanna stood back a bit cause she’s an awesome Mom and can’t stand to see her baby girl in pain. I straddled up behind Abby and held her tight cause I’m an awesome Dad and really didn’t know anything else to do. The nurses started with the back of Abby’s right hand. They slid the needle in, Abby screamed, but did her best to stay still for the nurses, which at time were a total of 2 in the room. They taped everything down, hooked up the IV and… couldn’t get any blood to come out of her hand. I will be honest. I know nothing about this process. Until this week, I thought an IV meant there was a needle in your arm the whole time you were getting medication and whatnot. During attempt number 1, I thought what I assume most people would think – Ok, these dumb nurses probably just missed her vein. They don’t know what they are doing. They wiggled the IV around, moved it back and forth, which only made Abby scream and cry and snot all the more. They did all their nursey stuff to make the magic happen, but no luck. So, they left that IV in her right hand and moved on to IV Attempt Number 2. They picked up Abby’s left hand this time. This pissed off my daughter even more, as now she was going to be jabbed with a needle for the second time. I think it was as this point that I noticed they every single bit of color had drained from my wife’s body. She looked like she was about the keel over right there in the Shot room in Hell. There was a lot going on after all. We were in Hell. Her daughter was getting not one, but now two needles jammed in her ghost-colored skin, there were dirty needles nearby, blood on the floor, oh yes, and the nurses had absolutely no bedside manner whatsoever. If they had been speaking English, I was imagining they would have been saying, “Shut up, little brat. This doesn’t hurt. You be still and take it like a good girl.”
With all of that happening, I could see that Alanna needed a moment and suggested she step away for a bit. Thankfully she did. Just in time too, as I turned back to see IV Attempt Number 2 was a complete failure. Nothing going with the left arm either, though at least this time they didn’t leave another IV taped to her hand. At that point, Abby was literally and figuratively a mess. I had her blow her nose, then picked her up, away from the Hell nurses and just held her for a bit, trying to get her to calm down.
Alanna returned sometime later (It’s all a blur) and we had a conversation about just getting the hell out of Hell and either going to Hong Kong or going home. Somehow those nurses got a hold of my daughter again. They were holding one of her feet this time, wanting to jab a needle in there for an IV attempt. Nope, not happening. I’m sure they were just doing their job, and obviously knew better what to do than I did, but I didn’t want them to stick something in my baby’s foot. At this point, I think we were ready to give up, so we were telling them just to take the Attempt Number 1 out of her right hand. I figured that’s what they were doing as they were taking off the tape, pulling everything out. Right? Right?? Wrong. They stuck it back in! Just like that we had IV Attempt Number 3. Same story for Abby – crying, screaming, snot. Rob is mad. Alanna is mad. There are now 4 nurses in the room all talking at the same time while we try to translate on our phones. I was this close to going full redneck on all of them. Not half redneck. Full redneck. The kind of redneck that gets you removed from a country and never allowed back. Thankfully… finally… this IV attempt worked… all of the sudden. They taped it all down nice and neat to her right hand and Abby even calmed down enough to say thank you in Chinese to the nurses, which is the first time I saw them smile since coming to Hell. Abby was calming down. Alanna was calming down. Rob was calming down. From there, we were led out of Hell and back to the VIP floor and room 27… or 50… I dunno.
We settled Abby down into her bed, made sure her IV drip was all nice and neat and doing its thing, and she fell right asleep. The nurse came in later and explained once again, this room was expensive, here sign this, blah blah. First of all, we have great insurance. It covers pretty much everything 100%. Second of all, we saw the prices. This stuff was SO MUCH cheaper than anything we were used to in the US. It also afforded us to have catered meals, 3 times a day, for all three of us, as long as we stayed under a certain amount. Which was easy to do because food is cheap in China. The plan for the first night was for me to stay there with Abby and send Alanna home to be with Logan. We were told by the nurses they still needed to get blood work from Abby. They wanted to do it down there in Hell right after the IV, but we told them no, that she had been poked enough for the time being. So, they said they would do it later that afternoon/night. Alanna asked if they could just do it in Abby’s room, and they said that they would see. Alanna gave me specific instructions before she left – that if they drew blood, I was to make sure they did it there in her room and NOT in Hell. I assured her I would do my best. I failed. Alanna was gone for a few hours when the nurses came in to take Abby down to Hell. I really did my best. I got loud, I argued in Google Translate, Abby cried some more, we talked to Alanna on the phone. Everything was escalating quickly. I was yelling, 15 nurses were talking in Chinese. But then it happened. At some point, an angel like whisper came out of my daughter while I was busy arguing loudly with the nurses. That little voice said – “Daddy, its okay. I’ll go downstairs for the shot.” And my heart broke into a million pieces right then and there. This little 6-year-old girl, badly dehydrated, having the worst stomach pains of her life, was able to muster up more courage than her father and go to the one place that terrified her the most – Hell. So back down to Hell we went. We stopped at every floor in the elevator. That kid was still in his bed in the hall, but asleep and not throwing up. Needle Baby was nowhere to be found. Into the shot room we went. Yes, the needles in the bucket. Yes, the blood on the floor. Would my daughter’s blood soon be on the floor as well? I felt pretty helpless. All I could do was hold her still as they went to her left hand, which had already been poked once, and there they poked again. And lo and behold… the blood came out easily. Seems the fluids they had been pumping into her upstairs for the past few hours had hydrated her tiny body to make things flowing out of her a little easier. She screamed, cried, though not as much, and they were able to get all the samples of blood they needed. Also, I didn’t see them spill any of her blood on the floor, in case you were wondering.
Back in our room, I turned some Chinese cartoons on the TV, hopped into bed with Abby and we were both out by 9pm. But just like any hospital, the nurses would come in every few hours to change out a bag, which usually woke me up. Abby seemed to sleep okay; all things considered. Flash forward to the wee hours of the morning though. The nurse woke us up to let us know that Abby’s vein was closed, and the drip wasn’t going in anymore. What did that mean? Exactly what you think it means. Another trip to Hell and to poke her again. No. Hell no. I wasn’t having it. I told them in no uncertain terms they were going to do everything else they needed to do here in this room. Period. Exclamation Point. Question Mark? I got what I asked for though. The nurses checked with the head nurses, who checked with the doctor, who checked with the head of Pediatrics, who checked the Administrative Staff, who checked with who I can only assume was the President of China. In any case, they came back with a YES, we will re-stick your daughter with our needles right here in your room. We did not have to make a return trip to Hell. Once again, this IV insertion went much more smoothly, some crying here and there, but it was over as quick as it started, the drip was dripping again, and Abby was back to sleep in no time. The next morning, Abby was looking better but still had the stomach and bathroom visit problems. They didn’t seem as bad or as frequent though, so I was hopeful she was on the road to recovery. Alanna got back to the hospital after seeing Logan off to school. I filled her in on everything, tried to soldier on, but soon enough I needed to go home and crash, letting Alanna stay the second night while I hung out at home with Logan.
We really didn’t have any news on Abby for a few days. They had new stool and blood samples, but they said they needed to wait a few days to check on the culture. Again, I don’t know what any of this means. I just wanted results ASAP, but that wasn’t happening. Once her bloodwork came back, it wasn’t good. First, it was in Chinese, so we didn’t understand. Once we translated it, it was in medical mumbo jumbo, so we still didn’t understand. The English-Speaking nurse tried to explain it to us, and we STILL didn’t understand it. So, who did we turn to? Google. Google knows everything and is always correct. What we did know – that our daughter had a nasty strain of Salmonella. That alone was enough to keep her on antibiotics for a few more days. But the bloodwork also showed spiked numbers in some other categories that I still have no clue what they mean. The doctor was worried about this stuff and wanted to keep Abby in the hospital longer, which we reluctantly agreed to. That was the blood sample from the first day we were there though. Now that she’d been on dope for 2 days, they needed, yes… you guessed it… another sample of blood. We all knew the routine by now – stay in the room, no Hell, make it quick, get your stuff, get out. All of that was accomplished, Abby barely made a sound and we were back to watching Chinese cartoons, playing the Legend of Zelda and playing with dolls, all while we waited on new results.
The doctor came in the next day, as Abby was improving steadily by the minute. We hoped she could be released since she was doing better. The doctor said that she wanted to wait on the blood work to come back just to make sure. Here’s what she could do. Or rather, what we could do – We could take Abby home that night, the 5th day of her stay. BUT the doctor wasn’t “releasing” her yet. So, while she was still under the eye of the hospital, we could have her at home. BUT, if we took her home, we had to sign some more papers basically stating that if anything happened to her at home, then it wasn’t the hospital’s fault. We didn’t care. We signed that stuff and told them to take out that nasty IV, because we were out of there. Oh… no? What’s that you say? They needed us to leave the IV in, just in case the bloodwork came back the next day, and it wasn’t good, they could just put her right back on the IV drip. So… they weren’t taking the IV out, but they were sending us home? Like, with a saline bag and all? No, just the IV thing, taped to her arm. Goods news though they said – if the bloodwork showed the all clear sign the next day, we could take the IV out and not have to come back to the hospital. “Great! Wait, you mean YOU will take the IV out, right nurse? No, you can do it, sir. It’s very easy. No pain. If you can’t do it, maybe your wife can, sir.” So, they sent us home with Abby and an IV still in her arm, and we hoped for good news the next morning. Abby was happy to be home, though was mad she couldn’t take a full shower with that dang IV still in her arm. Alanna wasn’t so sure about one of US taking out the IV though. I told her I could probably do it. Of course, I could probably fly a plane if I had to, or solve world hunger, If I had to, or maybe even walk on water. The odds on all of those were pretty similar I would say.
The next morning came and Alanna got the call from the hospital – and the good news. Abby’s bloodwork showed all good signs of improvement. She only needed to take some oral antibiotics for three more days, and then she’d be right as rain. And yes, by all means, go ahead and take that IV out at home, sir. No need to come back to the hospital for that. Why would you want to go through that Hell again? I had one thing working in my favor – Alanna was at work that morning. If she were at home, I think she would have overruled by decision to instantly become a nurse. You know, those people who have years of medical training and are really the ones saving lives and making people healthy. Pfft, I got this, right? I turned to the best teacher I know. Once again – Google. I watched a video about IVs and learned something interesting – there isn’t a needle in your arm when you have an IV. Maybe people already know this. I could just be ignorant in the ways of modern medicine. In case you don’t know though, a needle is used to poke into your skin. That needle is surrounded by a tube. The needle comes back out, but the tube stays in to administer the medications intravenously. Who would have thunk it??? So, I carefully pulled off all the tape and as I pulled off the last bit of it, the IV tube just came right out. Abby didn’t even have time to cry. And she didn’t even bleed. I was all ready to apply pressure and even did so for a bit of time, but there was no need.
So, Abby hit those meds for three more days and on Monday of this week she went back to school. I wouldn’t say she’s 100% better yet, but she’s pretty much back to her old self and her mother and father have stopped freaking out. For the moment. How was your week?
