Foreigner Laoduzi

No one likes to be sick, but being sick in a foreign country adds a whole new level of misery. One of the first Chinese phrases I learned was “wo you laoduzi.” This was supposed to be the phrase to get out of whatever your school wanted you to do. I learned the literal meaning is “I have diarrhea.”

I dread going to the doctor’s anyway, but I especially dread Chinese hospitals. They have a smell that is hard to describe. Chinese people go to the doctor for anything; a cough, a headache, whatever. There is no privacy or social norms like in the US. The doctors are not respected and often seen as money hungry or even corrupt. As soon as you sign in with a nurse, you pick which doctor you want to see and just line up outside their door. So whether you are there for a cold or for a heart attack you just stand by the door. Sometimes while you are in the room with the doctor he is doing other paper work or people will walk in and hand him things to sign. There is nothing to stop overly pushy patients from cutting the line and walking straight up to the doctor even if he is in the middle of examining another patient. The lab doesn’t have the little partitions or modesty curtain between people. So it is just a circle of blood work and you can’t look away because there are people everywhere. All this would be enough to keep me away, but now let’s add the language barrier.

I went to a fancy dinner Sunday night and everything was delicious. However, at midnight I had such bad stomach pain it woke me up from my sleep. I was up all night running back and forth to the bathroom. I called out of work the next morning it was so bad, but I was sure I would be fine by my afternoon class. I made it to my English Club at noon, but my students literally sent me home! It was unimaginable to me! And not just like leave so we can goof off, they were offering to come in again on their lunch break the next day to finish the assignment. My girls looked at me and said, “You don’t look so good. You should be in bed, go have a good rest. We will work later.”

I couldn’t decided which would be more awkward, having my boyfriend tell the doctor about my diarrhea or one of my co-workers. I don’t talk about those things, with anyone, ever. It’s embarrassing for me. But my boyfriend insisted that he would come take care of me. So before I let him in my apartment I tell him I wasn’t expecting anyone to come over and I hadn’t cleaned and I didn’t want to hear it! So I am still weak and looking awful so I immediately crawl back into bed. He starts looking around and decides he knows why I am sick. He often tells me it is because I ate this or that and not pig feet or whatever Chinese medicine. And he bases this advice on the fact that he is, “1/4th doctor.” Meaning that his grandfather studied Chinese medicine and he somehow inherited ¼ of his knowledge. It’s a fight I can’t win, but Lord knows I have tired.

Today his professional diagnosis was that my apartment had bad feng shui. The bed was facing north and needed to be south or east, also it was too close to the bathroom. His seriousness made me laugh and cry at the same time as I pulled the covers over my head. I was too weak to try and convince him this theory was flawed. “Did you bring me any medicine?” I asked to change the subject. There is this smelly liquid you drink and it will make you vomit almost immediately. It sounds awful but if you have some sort of food poisoning it will clear your system and it actually works. Chinese food often doesn’t agree with me so I know this medicine well, and apparently it is a root or something so it’s natural. Anyway, Daniel gave me some medicine that made it stop hurting long enough for me to fall asleep. I wake up and see him cleaning my apartment. I jump up and tell him he needs to stop, and I was embarrassed by my mess and didn’t want him to feel like he needed to do it. I know how to clean, I will clean, just not while I can barely move. So then he continues that he was just cleaning enough to move the furniture. During my protesting he is already pushing furniture around and reaching for the bed. Even in my weak state, I am sassy enough to push him out of the way and jump on the bed in protest saying, “If you want to move the bed, you will have to do it with me in it!” He burst into laughter at the sight on me squatting on the bed on all fours as If I were a mama bear protecting her young. I tell him all the time his English is wonderful but he has clearly not had enough listening practice! It’s funny now but at the moment I really was ready to attack.

After the medicine wore off he convinced me I needed to go to the doctor. Luckily my school has a clinic with a 24hour nurse, so I got to skip the hellish Chinese hospital. But it was still embarrassing describing my poop in detail to my boyfriend then having him translate for the nurse. Even with his good English, you don’t learn health terms in foreign language books. It was funny to hear him search for words and then try to describe diarrhea and constipation with hand motions instead of words. One thing I had to be careful with Daniel was making sure that he was telling me exactly what the nurse said, and not inserting his own opinions. I caught him once when she gave a 2 word phrase and Daniel turns to me and gives the long translation, “she says it is cold outside so you need to eat and drink only hot things. If you have ice cream when it is cold it will hurt your stomach.” I have often heard this advice from Daniel because he can’t understand why my foreign friends and I go to Coldstone in the winter. There is NO WAY that the nurse said that, there cannot be any scientific proof that you can’t eat cold things when it is cold out. The final diagnosis was to take these weird pellets and eat rice porridge with fish. Total cost: 2 kuai (30 cents).

I somehow made it to my classes the next day but never got to feeling any better. At one point I was sweating and had to sit down in one class and even told them to finish reading the passage and I would be right back. I ran to the bathroom and took some more medicine. Of course when I came back to the class they were playing basketball and picking each other up. At least I didn’t owe anyone any favors for covering my class. I was in bed the entire day Wednesday and Thursday. Daniel convinced me to ask my contact teacher to go to the clinic again with me.

This time it was the middle of the day so there were students sitting in the room listening as well. So Melissa is trying to translate and surprisingly her English isn’t nearly as good as Daniel’s and the questions seem to be a lot more technical. Her translation for diarrhea was, “when you sit on the toilet it’s like WOOSH with poo, yes?” So embarrassing, but wait it gets better. She asked if I was pregnant and I said no and then she said maybe it has something to do with that. She starts searching for words and then says, “the woman, every month, the comes out… you know?” Oh my period. I should have known that’s what she meant; sometimes the brat in me wants to play dumb just to see how else you would explain these things with limited English.

Thank God I made a full recovery and that is hopefully my last doctor’s visit.