Hospital visit

Well it’s still raining, it’s June and I haven’t been swimming yet. Humph. Have I been anywhere interesting lately? No… really busy at school and tkd, and also it keeps raining.

I did have a trip to the hospital last week. Any British people, don’t EVER moan about the nhs. Or, only moan to keep the politicians on their toes. Actually, it’s an amazing, fantastic, wonderful, attentive, comprehensive, unjudging service, I thank God quite frequently that if I ever got seriously ill I could go back to the UK and get treatment until I got better, not until I ran out of money. The nhs, what a fantastic idea, people should look after it.

Oh those of you who aren’t British - our healthcare if free to all citizens, and emergency healthcare is free to anyone who happens to be there (from what I can gather). Free! Now, you might have to wait a long time if you’re not going to die, but hey, if you’re going to die - they’ll do their best not to let it happen! How cool is that.

I have become quite cynical about the big hospitals in Shantou. From what I can find out, if you’re poor you get free education, but not free healthcare. They will let you die, and they will turn you out if you can’t pay for the bed. I don’t know what happens if you’re having a baby… infant/mother mortality rates are really low in China so there must be some kind of arrangement…

Also, when you go to the hospital the doctors will prescribe you lots and lots of medicine and want to do lots and lots of tests, many of which are utterly unconnected with your condition. This is to earn more money for the hospital. You actually have to decide for yourself which stuff you want to accept! Now, I don’t in theory object to earning money, but must it become so impossible to trust a doctor? Aren’t they supposed to be the people who you can most trust in times of dire need? It makes me sad.

On the plus side, if you have money and a doctor who you can trust, the healthcare is quite ok, better than many parts of the world. And there is medicine when you need it. Not to say of course that treatment for chronic conditions and muscular/skeletal injuries is generally excellent because Chinese medicine (I and various friends have found) is much more effective in this area. Although… you might want to go to a Chinese medicine specialist for that…