Chinese Medicine Experience

A common question I get from home is, "Have you ever felt in danger while you're in China?" No, not until my experience with Chinese medicine. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Chinese medicine in general, I take 双黄连口服液 (Coptis chinesis) whenever I'm feeling under the weather, and 正红花油 (red flower oil, see picture) is great after a long train ride. I do, however, have a problem with having Chinese medicine injected in me without permission! Next time I'll go to a reputable doctor of Chinese medicine, who doesn't give a liter of salt water and penicillin for a cold.

After not getting over a cold for three days or so, I decided to ask my boss for the day off work. They insisted I had to go to the doctor first (they really meant "instead"). They were sure that a shot of penicillin would make my cold go away, but I was sure that that wasn't what doctors in the US usually do for colds. Well, I agreed to go to their doctor and have the penicillin shot - boy was that a mistake! I should've known that my boss would take me to the cheap doctor, not the good one.

The doctor's office was in a building you wouldn't expect, right next to a restaurant. They sold medicine at the front counter. The doctor agreed that penicillin was the cure. He told me that no, there wasn't a pink syrup version like I remembered having as a kid, it had to be administered through IV. He really wanted to practice his English on me, but I kept to Chinese, knowing that it would be easier to get straight answers that way, and I just wasn't in the mood. He insisted the whole time that I looked like an Englishman, not an American.

I had to go and lay down in the back room to have the IV administered. It was full of people, including a crying little girl with her grandma yelling at her because she was crying from her shot. Of course, everyone watched the foreigner get his IV put in, and had something to say about it. There was a nice pregnant woman across from me, but she fell asleep after we introduced ourselves.

They told me the IV would take two hours. "What exactly is in it?" "Well, this one is just salt water," the nurse told me. Why did I need to sit for an hour to get a liter of salt water put in my blood? They said the second one would be the medicine.

After the saline solution was done dripping, I realized that I really had to go to the bathroom. Great. One hour to go. Now there was an old man moaning next to me, and the pregnant lady's husband came and started cooing and fawning over her. I pretended to sleep, but really I was just waiting to pee and get the needle out of my hand.

Finally, it was done, but someone was in the bathroom! It sounded like they were washing something. Yes, there was a washing machine in the bathroom, and they had been washing their lab coat. The bathroom was dirty, not a good sign in a doctor's office. After my urgent matter was taken care of, I noticed a strange burning sweaty sensation all over my body. I went and asked the doctor, who said it was the bad 气 (qì) being released or something. "What was in the IV?" I asked. "Penicillin...and Chinese medicine". "Um...what Chinese medicine? Why didn't you ask me first?" He then told me the name of the medicine, but of course I didn't know it in Chinese, and he didn't know it in English. The whole ordeal cost 50RMB ($6). Thanks alot, doc. At least the cold went away.