fuenf neun scaling the alps

 Nico is built like a little rubber tank. I’m pretty sure he could survive a nuclear blast at this point, which is great news for me as it means I’ve managed to avoid taking him to a doctor for almost a year. However, that streak was about to end sooner or later, and after three days of roasting fevers, smoker-worthy hacking coughs, sleepless night, and projectile vomiting, Christian and I were finally willing to succumb to that “worried parent” thing and haul the sicko to the hospital.

We packed together the usual entourage–Christian to drive, me to be obnoxious, an innocent and unsuspecting Chinese friend to translate, and of course Nico to be sick–and high-tailed it down to the premiere children’s hospital in the city, conveniently named Dalian Children’s Hospital. Once there, we performed the usual circus stunts of paying a registration fee before immediately entering utter shock at the number of people in line before us. Then came my persistent attempts to pull the “foreigner card” by goading our poor Chinese friend into harassing the nursing staff for ideas of how we might be able to cut the line. Finally, the nurses suggest we go ahead and show Nico to the doctor so that she could decide if his condition was serious enough to deal with him immediately. Surprisingly enough, the doctor had absolutely spectacular English, was not the least bit judgmental, and was perfectly at home with our foreign eccentricities.

Blood tests and an x-ray were ordered. As is usual in China, we had to cart our sick child over to the cashier to foot the bill before any of these things could be performed. An hour of blood work and x-rays followed after which we were back to the doctor for a diagnosis before our queue number had even been reached. The results: bronchitis caused by a bacterial infection (instead of the usual viral kind). Our options for treatment included three kinds of antibiotics: a shot, an IV, or by mouth. I was all gung-ho for a shot as Nico had been throwing up all morning, and despite the local popularity of IVs, I still have my reservations. Upon returning from a penicillin allergy test, though, Christian uttered the word “IV” instead of “shot,” and suddenly we were signed up for another kind of torture: trying to distract a baby from the needle poking out of his forehead.

Total elapsed time for the whole hospital adventure: 5 hours.

Nico’s now looking much better, though, and we officially have a pediatrician (who’s willing to make appointments with us so we don’t have to go through the entire fiasco again).