A Visit to a Chinese Doctor

Postscript

In June 2011 Winnie and I traveled to China on a three week vacation trip. By the end of the second week, while we were staying with Winnie’s older sister’s family I came down with a serious flu-like cold, probably the worst I’ve had in over 20 years. After a couple of days it was obvious that I wasn’t getting better on my own, so Winnie’s brother-in-law took me and Winnie down to the local clinic. Once at the clinic, Winnie’s brother-in-law went off and came back a few minutes later to usher us into the office of the head doctor. Coincidentally, Winnie’s brother-in-law grew up with the head doctor and was best of friends, which may explain our quick appointment.

The doctor, with translation assistance from Winnie, had me stand up and stick out my tongue. He peered into my mouth using a small flashlight, looked in each of my ears, and felt my forehead for temperature. He backed away from me shaking his head “tsking,” then wrote out a prescription and handed it to my brother-in-law.  We marched over to the pharmacy, waited in line a few minutes, and received three small envelopes each containing a small number of pills. Total time at the clinic for a medical exam and receiving medication was less than one hour. There was no charge for the doctor’s exam. I don’t know the exact cost for the medication, but it wasn’t enough to be a concern for either Winnie or her brother-in-law.

We went back home and between Winnie and her sister (who is a middle-school English teacher) they explained the schedule for taking the three medications.  There were six pills in one envelope, with three pills in another and four pills in the third, and written instructions on each envelope.

I took my first batch, and actually started feeling a little better in a few hours. I continued the regiment over the next two days until all the pills were gone, and by the time the pills were gone I was feeling almost back to normal. I was very tired still, and slept a lot the rest of our last week in China, but the cold was gone.

I contrast this medical regiment to what I would have expected here in the US. Here, I am sure my doctor would have given me a whopping dose of some antibiotic to knock out the cold that would have taken many days to have an effect.  Without my TriCare medical coverage the costs for a doctor’s office visit would be $120, and the medication probably over $100.

Final Thoughts

I’m not going to claim that Chinese medicine is across-the-board superior to what we have here in the US. I am going to state that Chinese medicine has a different approach than what we practice in the US. It obviously works and is a lot less expensive than “regular” US medical care. With all the healthcare debate over the past few years here in the US, and given the overall sorry state of health in this country, we might just want to pay attention to what a culture with over 2000 years of recorded medical research is doing and try to learn something.

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