"RHUMinations" on Taiwanese health care....

I suppose there have been quite a few of you around the world who, for the last four days or so, have found it hard to sleep. It pains me to say that you likely had trouble performing other quotidian tasks -- i.e. flossing, eating, hopscotch, and long-division. Yes, you -- poor, poor you -- found yourself spinning into infinity due to a lack of an axis of rotation.

Take comfort, alas, in knowing that I am back, and I feel quite good after a bout of "bronchitis." I put it in quotes because the "doctor" who diagnosed me said in the same breath as "You might have the flu."

Dramatization:

Fanfan: (To doctor) Chinese, Chinese. I'm speaking Chinese.
Doctor: (To Fanfan) Hao. Chinese. Chinese. I can speak Chinese too. (Turns to me) You don't feel good?
Me: No.
D: Sore throat?
M: Yes.
D: (looking down in my throat) Fever?
M: Not right now, but last night.
D: (Taking my temperature with the ear thermometer) I hear you cough.
M: Yes, a lot.
D: You have a fever. See? 38 degrees (He shows me the thermo, but he doesn't know that 38 degrees means nothing to me, as I don't know what temperature my body should be in celsius)
F: Tell him about your muscles.
M: My muscles feel very sore.
D: Oh, could be the flu. (I nodded, since that was why I told him) You have bronchitis.

"Oh," I wanted to say, "At what point exactly did you decide that?"

He sat me down at a machine that shot mist down my throat. After about two minutes of drooling water out of my mouth into my lap, the machine shut off and I was handed a parting gift of eight assorted medecines that I was to take three times a day for the following three days:

• Erythromycin
• Tinten
• Cabosistin
• Sou-an
• Strocaine
• Coldan
• Panadol
  

This is what I had both feared and expected. Only about three weeks before, I had had a mild head cold and was quite congested. Fanfan and I went to the pharmacy for what I thought would be some sort of equivalent to Tylenol PM or Nyquil so that I could sleep. I left the pharmacy with six little packets of five pills that I was to take for two days, three times a day.

Fanfan wasn't surprised at all, but I couldn't understand why, to deal with a simple cold, I needed this arsenal of pills that would make a cancer patient blush. I figured something was amis, but I didn't know what I could do about it. In any case, I wanted to get better.

Well, not long after, I read an article in Taiwanease called "Pill-Popping Practices" in which the author, Nathan Haslewood, describes the problems facing Taiwan's health care system. One part of the article in particular struck me:

[D]octor's examinations are very quick, resulting in the prescribing of a standard concoction of drugs that will include various non-specific medicines, with an extra does of pills to protect your stomach from the rest you've just been forced upon.

This is not exactly the sort of treatment I hope for when I see the doctor, so Christmas day, when I woke up feeling the first pangs of a beleaguered immune system, I did not want to go to the doctor. I did not want to pump myself full of whatnot. Well, I held off for days, until I started coughing (a sure sign that things weren't getting any better). So, Fanfan and I went to a clinic bright and early Thursday morning, where the aforementioned encounter took place.

Alas, I am better. I've still got a bit of a cough, but I feel like a million bucks.

So, the medicine worked, right? Maybe. That doesn't mean I like joking down eight medecines at a time, especially after a doctor's visit that lasted all of four minutes.

I've been told that I should have gone to the hospital or a clinic that was recommended by someone I trusted, because, otherwise, you get stuck with these sort of drive-thru doctors who blurt something at you, hand you your happy meal, and you're off.

I'll have to remember that for next time.

One last note on the picture, for those of you who haven't been to Taiwan, or Asia even. When people are sick, it's quite normal (expected, rather) that they where a mask in public. I've been told that this was more or less the case before SARS, but since it has become almost institutional. I have children who wear masks in class on a regular basis.