Health exam, China-style

One of the bellboys with all the stuff we lugged from Michigan (he's our new bff for all his help!)
This bruise looked so much more gruesome in real life!

The following is a recap from our first week in China: We arrived, very jet-lagged on Monday, had an appointment to visit the girls' new school (Xiamen International School) on Tuesday morning and were informed Tuesday that Gene and I would have to submit to a health exam on Wednesday morning, on an empty stomach, accomanied by a sweet, but non-English-speaking lady from the office. We begged to have a bilingual helper and were rewarded with Wendy. Her English isn't totally perfect, but it's sure better than our Mandarin! I was most worried about the blood-draw since I usually pass out during them...but I didn't pass out or even get too sick. Had to sit up, across a narrow table from the nurse (?) who drew the blood, no place to recline, but Gene squatted down beside me and I did okay. Little did I know that I'd sport a three-inch bruise on the inside of my arm for the next week and a half! Apparently there's not much concern about blood-born pathogens since we all just tossed our blood-soaked q-tips (cotton balls were not available) into an open garbage can. I sure hope the needles, etc were sterile! Also had an ultrasound of my ribcage area, some sort of ekg of my heart with sensors on my arm, leg and chest, vision test, height/weight and blood pressure and a full-body x-ray while standing on a giant machine in a metal-encased room--glad I've already had my children since I'm fully radiated now! The urine test was interesting--just put the very little cup on a tray with all the others, no lid or anything. I pray there's no cross-contamination with anyone else's sample! We had to go room-to-room for each of these tests and wait our turn with the 20-or-so other people getting tested. It was a long, narrow hallway, tiled white with metal bench-type things along one side. Each room had a sign sticking out from above the door frame with Chinese characters and the English translation. I started to get pretty nervous when I saw signs for "surgery," "injections," "counseling" and "gynecology." Thankfully we did not have to go into any of those! At first we thought that my exam was more costly than Gene's and that made me very wary of what they had in store for me! (we had to pay cash, up front, before the exams--about $100 apiece).
We were told on Friday that our results were in and that we had to go pick them up. This time the girls went with us and got to see the clinic (I was so glad they didn't have to have the exam too). We were floored by the long list of results; I think it was probably the most thorough exam I've ever had and I've had two babies! Funny how this supposedly backward country can get the lab results returned so quickly...doesn't seem to happen at home. We had a lot of fun in the van trying to figure out our results as we are not health care professionals, nor do we read Chinese. Seems that we had a few blood tests (out of about 25!) that were slightly out of normal range, but not enough to cause problems, we're both HIV negative, Gene can't see worth a darn without his glasses, our hearts are normal, kidneys are fine and a whole bunch of other stuff! All of this so we can apply for a one year residency permit (along with numerous other documents that I may detail later, after a long nap!). I don't think we even got to keep a copy of the results for our records!
By the way, we were told on the night before the exam that we would need to bring along four passport-sized pictures of each of us. Ummm, okay, how exactly do we get those?! We were desperate, so we asked the hotel staff to help us. After much banter between many people (the front desk, the concierge, some manager-types) we were able to get our needs across. They were so gracious as to offer (force the poor kid, actually) a bellboy to go out onto the busy street with us, after dark, to find the photo place. Turns out there was a little photo hut place almost directly across from our hotel (who knew?) and the bellboy was able to communicate our needs to the lady working there. We decided to go ahead and get eight pictures each, just for good measure. We sat for the pictures and then she proceded to doctor Gene's up, taking out shadows, clearing up a glare on his forehead, etc. Guess she thought my prisoner-like look was adequate because she didn't even try to fix mine. Perhaps she thought I was too far gone. Can't say as I blame her since I hadn't been sleeping enough, but she could've at least tried to fix some of the frizziness of my hair! We saw the bellboy at the grocery store the next day and took his picture when we left the hotel for good--he's our new bff. This experience is likely a portent of our time here--us asking for lots of help and (hopefully) getting what we need even if it takes a long time.