"Cheers," said one of the South African teachers as he got in line behind me holding his pee cup. It was a long line, and no one was really monitoring what people were doing with their uncapped urine samples. Oh China.
Even though I had gotten gobs of medical work done in the States (an EKG and chest Xray), China wouldn't accept the paperwork. So, I hopped in the school van along with a few other teachers to go get another so-called physical. Pretty much all medical work in China is done in the hospitals because clinics are so expensive to maintain. When we walked inside the hospital lobby, it felt more like a bowling alley than a medical facility.
I went through the lobby line and was handed my application form and a sheet of bar codes. This bar code became my identity as I passed through the blood sample line, the urine sample line, the ear and throat line, the chest x-ray line, and the sonogram line (no idea why I needed a sonogram). At each of these stops, they stuck the bar code on my sample and the next person in line stepped up. During the ear and throat check-up, everyone in line watched as the doctor told me in English, "you have dirty ears".
The whole thing was pretty surreal. I wondered if the final step would be packaging me and sticking a bar code on the outside. I felt that much like a commodity. Bedside manner doesn't really exist in China, but at the same time, they were able to "process" a bunch of people in a short period of time. I decided to ponder our countries' healthcare differences during a nice hot shower back in my apartment.
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