Chinese Hospitals and Physical Therapy

Back to my broken wrist!

Getting my cast off was both a scary and happy day. Happy because I was so tired of it and scary because I had gotten a second cast put on by the Chinese doctors and I had no idea if they had put the cast right or not. When they took of my huge cast to put on the smaller, more manageable second cast I was absolutely terrified. The doctor was ripping off my first cast despite my pleas for him to slow down and take his time. I told my Chinese co-worker who was with me that I was not in a rush and he still ignored us and went on with his business. It really hurt and they didn’t even do me the favor of taking of my cast in the same room where they would put on the new cast. I have found that in China, each step in a process like this is done in a different room with a different person with a different stamp. It’s like a marathon. They do not seem to like to consolidate things! The other doctor put my cast on very quickly and it looked pretty shoddy, although an Indian intern there who spoke some English tried to assure me that the cast would be fine.

So, this is why I was nervous when I came back the second time. I really did not want to have any problems with the way my bone healed. They took the cast off, took some more x-rays and then a doctor took a look at them. This experience was my first time truly feeling the pains of the language barrier in China. The doctor was explaining to my Chinese co-worker what was going on with the x-rays and my co-worker was not really translating what the doctor was saying, either because she was unable to or just did not feel the need to. The most I could get out of her was that there was still a piece of my bone that was not healed. So of course, my question was what does that mean, do I need another cast? Of course, my questions were not really answered and they just said that I needed to move it around and exercise it. So, I then asked my co-worker to ask them about physical therapy. She did not know the term so I had to explain it to her for a awhile until she understood. She asked the doctor and the doctor told her that I did not need physically therapy, all I needed was some sunshine and milk. At this point I was on the verge of crying out of frustration but I controlled myself. I pushed the physical therapy again and finally they prescribed a 10 visit regimen to the hospital for me.

The kind of physical therapy the Chinese do was definitely not what I had in mind. This physical therapy involved me going in two different rooms each day- one room was called the High Frequency Electrotherapy Room, and the other was the Usage of Chinese Drugs to Fumigate Room. Right when I saw the names of the rooms I wanted to say forget it but I had already paid so I don’t think I had a choice but to continue. In the High Frequency Electrotherapy Room, I would sit on a chair next to a bed and the nurse would put these pads hooked up to a big machine on top of my wrist. She would wave a little wand and when the wand lit up that meant the machine was working. I still don’t really know what electrotherapy is, but I did some quick research on it and learned that studies had not shown it to be effective in healing bones….great!! There were people in there who had these pads on their heads, backs, chests… anywhere you could think of. After doing this, I would go to the Usage of Chinese Drugs to Fumigate Room, where I would put my hand into a small cut-out in a bed and the Chinese drugs would come up through the hole and fumigate my hand! It was very hot and felt pretty good. This room always had a nice smell to it because of the Chinese drugs. I swear it was just tea or something though coming up through there- one time I saw them pull the drawer out where the big, hot pot of water was and it had these tea bag things in it.

I really had no faith in either room having any effect on healing my wrist but I continued going to the hospital anyways because I made friends with the nurses there and it was fun visiting them everyday! My favorite nurses by far were in the fumigation room. There were two nurses who were there everyday and I became the closest with them. One of them, the younger one, spoke a bit of English so she would often be my liaison to speaking with the older nurse. When I first started going there I still didn’t speak a lot of Chinese, but somehow in the middle of my visits I really started picking up my Chinese so we kind of stopped speaking in English as much and the younger nurse let me practice my Chinese.

The older nurse was definitely my fave- I would always do something wrong in there somehow and she would chastise me in Chinese and give me exasperated looks, although she was always smiling when she did it. Everytime I walked in there I would have a big smile on my face and she would sort of shake her head and sigh, but I think she secretly liked me because again, she did it with a smile. I think I finally won her approval the last day I was there though because I noticed that she had done a setting on my machine wrong so I called her in and told her and she looked really surprised and patted me on the head lol. Sometimes she would like to just try to talk to me in Chinese even though I didn’t understand very much and just observe me. It seems kind of weird, but I’m getting more used to that. One time I walked into the fumigation room and it was full so I had to wait in a chair by the nurses. The older nurse and another younger nurse just sat there and looked at my face very thoughtfully and talked about it in Chinese. I was like okay this is awkward but whatever. The younger nurse would sometimes just pause after speaking Chinese and just say “yes, very beautiful” in English lol. They really could have been talking trash though, and I would have had no idea!

The older nurse also took it upon herself to teach me some names of body parts and she would quiz me every time I came in. I am really going to miss them!

My bone is pretty much healed now, so I guess the Chinese meds worked after all :)