About the Hospital

When I first hurt my ankle I went straight to the hospital from the football match. To start with I thought that it was broken. I was on my own so when I got out of the Taxi I had to hop to the entrance to the hospital. By the time I got inside my hopping leg was about to collapse so I asked one of the ladies at reception if they had a wheelchair. This was where I encountered my first problem

First they didn't want to give me one because I was on my own and apparently in China it is highly unusual for a person to go to the hospital on their own and so they wanted me to sit down and wait until someone arrived to help me. After I convinced them that I wasn't going to call anyone to come, (the hospital was about 45 mins from anyone I knew) they let me have one, but they wouldn't let me go to the A&E department because they said I needed to pay a 500 yuan (30 pounds) deposit before I could go anywhere. I only had 50 yuan on me because I never like to carry a lot of money out with me because there are a lot of pickpockets. My ankle was still extremely painful at this point and I was getting pretty tired anyway. After some (I would like to say "polite") discussion I managed to convince them that I wasn't going to steal their wheelchair and they pointed me in the direction of the doctor.

When I got to the relevant doctors room. I tried to explain what had happened, but the guy wouldn't even look at me! He just said I had to go back to the place I had come from and pay a registration fee! Another bloke in the Doctors room (the doors are always open and there are usually at least 2 other patients competing with you for the docs attention) very kindly offered to push me back and help with the registration. Another great example of the warmheartedness of ordinary Chinese people.

On my return to the doctor, he just poked my foot a few times and told me I needed an X-Ray, and that it was going to cost 100 yuan. The reason that I had gone to such a far out hospital was because my insurance company told me that they had a relationship with this one and money would not be an issue. When I told the doctor this he had no idea what I was talking about, and they basically told me that I couldn't have an X-Ray, or any other treatment because I didn't have any money!

To cut the rest of this long story short I was able to call Aaron and ask him to bring a load of money, and 2 hours after arriving at the hospital with what I thought may have been a broken ankle I got my x-ray.

I'm glad that this happened to me and not Jenna or Tabs and that it wasn't too urgent. We now know next time when we head to the hospital even if it is a huge emergency to make sure we have a load of cash otherwise they will not even look at us.

It's been a week and a half since I hurt my ankle

It's been pretty frustrating at times, and the crutches we have are really hard work. This morning we went back to the hospital to get my plaster changed. A friend of ours had bought in some elastic ones from England and so I now have one of those on. I'm feeling much better about it now.



Jenna has been nothing short of wonderous this week. She has carried on with school while looking after Tabs at the same time and also doing all my housework jobs. I can't wait to get better and give her a rest :p

Wow Iv'e just scrolled up and realized that was long, sorry if it was boring......