Your Sick Child and You-In China (2022)

Being a parent of a child has been a healthy challenge enough, but say you are a parent/guardian of a child in a country generally foreign to you and with no government supports. I have now been in the position where I strongly believe we have it too good in Canada. No, this is not a which country is better kind of discussion, but it is observation and "prepare for it" based on life in China as a foreigner. 

To start-No. China's healthcare is NOT bad or atrocious. It is limited depending on where you are and what you are looking for based on your available tender though. It is no secret based on films/television like "Dying to Live"(2019) that there was not just a national issue of healthcare in China-but globally as these scenes of how healthcare is manipulated is not much different from the corruption/monopolistic behaviours that are generated through other media streams internationally.

Are a lot of the scenes people are privy to in mainstream television and media as common as we imagine them to be based on how exposed they are through media-No. Are there yes-as there are everywhere.

I'll put it out there like this, with an international healthcare plan, I would be able to choose where I go, not be charged a dime and then carry-on my merry way. Without it, I will need to pay whatever is due-there is social healthcare that is paid by employment (China's way of trying to ensure that no one is empty handed in regards to healthcare), but with COVID-19 and the current status of the economy-let's be real here for a moment-you don't have enough if you are in a situation where YOU REALLY need to see a doctor.

Each hospital (especially after COVID-19), has developed its own way of managing inpatient/outpatient and in most cases-they make it work on the large scale. However without getting into my experience with particularity the "best hospital" (let's just say you don't want to need to take your kid to a hospital in Dandong 丹东 ) for Women and Children in Dandong ( 奴子儿子医院的丹东 Women and Children's Hospital) there are experiences that leave us with more questions than answers. What questions could one possibly have from a hospital right? Especially one in another country!? I know-obviously. The questions my wife (who is Chinese) and I were asking were becoming less of the relatively obvious ones that asked at the beginning of the experience, but becoming more in particularly related to the why of inconsistency of physicians, choice of antibiotics, as well as methods for testing. 

As a child-I believe my son has now received more needles than I had up until about grade 5 (he is 3 years old). Is that a lot you might ask, it is. Why? Children are not initially given intravenous antibiotics, but when there are no other ideas, they will have the child in for 3 treatments (1 each day) in which children would be sat with parents in the patient room (don't even bother asking its up to COVID prevention code)-let's assume that the only prevention measure in this hospital in Dandong that was actually followed was the tedious redundancy in checking NAT results and Vaccination Passports. My son was in the hospital everyday for about 2 hours for around a week. Spoke to a couple parents while there who were going through the same thing-a few others were notably there quite as much and as long as we were. Without saying decisions of treatment and drug choice are influenced by financial kickback-cause there is reason to believe a lot of it isn't, doing some simple math, if each parent is paying saying about 70 CNY on a visit for antibiotics alone-someone is doing alright with that foot traffic because the upkeep on that place is not very high. Seemingly though there is a whole new wing being built-maybe something will change-eventually. Sorry-I got pretty angry with that hospital in Dandong so a lot of animosity there-I mean, yes, they helped my son get better but when we walked in with a case file as full as his was, someone would have to really not be a doctor to have no idea what he needs. At that point we were aware of a lot of the medical terminology of the pharmaceutical products he needed/was taking and did take-a chunk of what he needed was only something that one could purchase with a doctor's note. I digress, After he was already taking antibiotics, they wanted to test for allergies, and this wasn't an allergy test like going to an allergist who drops a couple extracts and pin drops each to test for reactions, this was basically a shot of Amoxicillin and its reaction would tell the doctor if he could or not get the treatment. A big point of surprise for my wife and I was that the penicillin/antibiotics in China are actually not to the same level of purity as they are in many other places due to cost. To keep costs lower, the antibiotics aren't quite the same and thus work at a slower pace or need to be provided as directly as possible.

As a parent though, getting to it, here was what a week in the hospital led to,

Obviously the blue container on the far left is milk powder formula, but other than that. Everything else there was antibiotics to oral solution, or as I found out later to be insect exoskeleton extract (tall white box at the back with a green top). Ya, that was something a doctor (of the many we had seen at that point), had strongly recommended to help. It wasn't until my son's fever returned and my wife as well as I were getting worried about the recurring fever that I decided to start being a little less trusting of the doctor's "recommendations" and found that a lot of what he was being given was either redundant or generally-useless. At one point there was an old doctor who recommended old herbal treatments that involved taping ground up herbs to pressure points (or whatever spots) of the body and allowing the skin to absorb the mixture-through osmosis, this was expected  to assist the body in its abilities to fight off infections. It was not until probably the second trip to the hospital that we had actually been given a clear diagnosis on what he had and even then the doctors couldn't seem to distinguish if it was bronchitis, traechitis or tonsillitis. To be honest, I still don't actually know if it was one or two of the previously mentioned exactly because no one could actually say. It was generally just an infection, closer to the end of the sickness though it was definite tonsillitis as they said the "white spots" at the back of the mouth and harden/swollen glands beneath the back of his jaw's hinge were clear and definite signs of infection/tonsillitis. 

As a parent here in China-find a hospital, build a knowing of a doctor you like. For us it was a doctor at Guangzhou No.1 hospital (the oldest hospital in GZ), who not only got us sorted out, provided reassurance that he was getting better, also recommended what you do and don't need in regards to all the other medicines/remedies. At that point a friend had recommended going there (I was not a believer at first). Reassured enough by the doctor's observations and ability to dictate what we had gone through/what was still to come, when she recommended the "cough syrup" that they make there at the hospital (its like a Ma and Pa recipe sort of idea), I was receptive of it. I know what I said earlier, but his cough was actually bad enough to induce regurgitation from time to time. I was made a believer, it worked-then again maybe it was taking that other "whatever-the-heck medicine" that was causing the coughing.

I think it is that last statement in general that sums up the frustrations and fear (fear in myself in particular), that being here with my son-instead of taking him to the "global doctors"/international clinic was something of a concern.

As a parent, start with the international doctor at a clinic friends/colleagues recommend. Here in Guangzhou, I'd believe the most popular/frequented is United Family near Clifford. Again, going back to the initial rant of the introduction though, international healthcare clinics do get expensive. Although many hospitals around offering aspects of the hospitalization experience bilingual-the main thing is the over medication of individuals without clarity or appropriate direction.