stomach problems

Since moving to China almost six months ago, I have had “stomach problems” nearly every day. At first, I assumed I was simply getting used to a new environment. Then I assumed I had food poisoning. After a dozen such incidents, I came to wonder whether it was possible to get food poisoning so many times in a row, especially when I tried to be so careful about my food and water.

I mentioned my ailments in a roundabout way to my close friend Joanne, a first year medical resident, over Google Talk. After a few delicate parries, she asked me to describe my symptoms directly. I explained that I had digestive problems (I wince even to write the phrase). With some kindly prodding, I laid out all my painful and mortifying symptoms.

“Do you have muscle cramps?” she typed.

“Yes, actually, I do!”

Joanne explained that often chronic stomach ailments can lead to potassium loss, causing muscle cramps like those that gripped my legs and feet without warning in the evenings, causing me to rock and writhe until I was able to unknot myself.

“It sounds like you have giardia,” she suggested. I went and looked up giardia on WebMD and it was like reading an exact account of my illness. I Googled “giardia” and read a few harrowing travelers’ tales, including some from China. Perhaps giardia, or some microbial cousin, was the cause of all my suffering. I was determined to get a clear diagnosis. In the meantime, she suggested I drink Gatorade.

* * *

Calling hospitals is not very helpful. I figure that arriving in person will allow me to persist where a phone call would end with the first receptionist hanging up. I have been to the international clinic before, and I know they are no good, so I opt for a list of local hospitals instead.

The first hospital I chose specializes in gastrointestinal diseases, but when I arrive, I find that no one there speaks English, and no one is willing to listen to my broken complaints in Chinese. At last, a receptionist points to the list of local hospitals I clutch in my hand. “Here, they speak English. Go there.”

Something about the way she carelessly taps the paper makes me suspect this is entirely fabricated, just a clever bid to get rid of me. Nevertheless, that hospital is the only other on the list to cite gastrointestinal diseases as a specialty, so I make my way over there.

The second hospital is on a pedestrians-only street, so the taxi drops me as near as he can and then leaves me to my own devices. I point at a large building to our left.

“Is this it?”

“I can’t drive here,” he says again, and that is that. I pay my fare and wander down the narrow street through the hot, heavy humidity that is almost rain. A bicycle rickshaw driver follows behind me, offering his services in a lilting sales pitch like a lullaby backed by the cicadas' long, mechanical howls.

In my painstaking beginner Chinese, I explained to street vendors and security guards, “I am going to the doctor. I am sick. Do you know, where is the doctor?”

I find the building at last, but not before sweat adheres my jeans to my body until I feel I am swimming through a murky pond wearing a denim wetsuit. Inside, I proudly deliver the following declamation to the ground floor secretary: “I am sick. I have a stomach illness. I am here to see Dr. W--. Is he on the fifth floor?” Some scuffling and murmuring ensue. Three or four other secretaries come over. It is decided he is indeed on the fifth floor. I know from previous trips to Chinese hospitals that I am supposed to get a card or slip from the first floor counters, but I recklessly press on for the fifth floor without one. I figured once I find Dr. W--, I can always return downstairs for whatever paperwork is required.

On the fifth floor, I repeat my speech about stomach sickness and Dr. W— to several nurses and receptionists. I notice that this hospital is one of the very few places I have been in Shanghai that does not have a single English word or even Roman character displayed anywhere in the building. It is clear no one speaks a word of English. The nurse asks me to be seated.

I sat quietly on one of the plastic seats lining the corridor and wait for someone to discover me. Everyone is acutely, obviously ignoring me, hoping that I’ll eventually go away. The corridor rings with the unmistakable sound of a dentist’s drill, which seems eerily out of place in the gastrointestinal department. What are they drilling? I shudder to think.

Eventually a nurse comes by and tells me to move to a different chair. There is some talking, and pointing, and I repeat my same set speech to every person that approaches. Eventually, my patience reaches its limit. I returned to the first desk. The receptionist, a doctor, and a nurse are all conversing in a desultory fashion, apparently speculating about the cause of an open wound on the doctor’s ungloved hand.

I rehearse again my monologue: “I am sick. My stomach hurts. I am here to see Dr. W--.”

“You are foreign,” the receptionist explains wearily. “Go to the foreigners’ hospital.”

“The foreigners’ hospital sent me here,” I attempt to say.

Unfazed, she repeats, “If you are foreign, you go to the foreigners’ hospital.”

Outside, I wander over to a large intersection to catch a taxi. I am defeated enough to consider going to the international clinic despite my earlier grievances. I wait for an empty taxi to pass, watching a man across the street bathing in the stream from a broken fire hydrant. Soap and grey water run along the sidewalk and pool between the cement slabs. Occupied taxis zip by. I consider moving on to a bigger intersection with a better chance of finding a free cab, but I am in the grip of a superstitious belief that if I move from my spot, a taxi will immediately zip over. With a great rumble and crack, rain breaks over the city. Once it’s raining, finding a taxi is all but impossible. I walk six soggy blocks to a larger street, ducking inside a taxi as the driver is discharging his last passenger, and make my way to the foreigners’ hospital.

I arrive at the foreigners’ hospital under a heavy downpour. There are several buildings on the medical campus, and taxis dart in and out between them. I approach a security guard to ask him where the foreigners’ hospital is located, but before I can even ask, he breaks into a broad smile. “Foreigner?” he asked in Chinese. “That building there, 15th floor.” As I rush across the flooded driveway, several other security guards spot me and give the same friendly directions, beaming with delight at putting things in their proper place.

The wait at the foreigners’ hospital is not much better than at the previous two hospitals. Doctors, nurses and receptionists trundled in and out in groups of two or three, ignoring me entirely. The one man whose attention I was able to catch tells me pointedly to go stand at the other desk. The other desk wants nothing to do with me. While I wait, I read the price list posted on the wall behind the counter. There is a list of medical procedures with two prices next to each, for “first class” and “second class” treatment. The priciest item on the menu is 21,800 yuan for “resection of severed finger.”

At last I am handed my registration paperwork. No sooner do I begin to fill out the forms than a nurse approaches me from behind and sticks a thermometer into my ear without a word of warning. The thermometer beeps. “Perfectly normal!” she declares in aggrieved tones, as if she’s already found me out as nothing more than a time-wasting hypochondriac.

A long time passes before I am ushered into the doctor’s chambers. The doctor is a diminutive elderly Chinese woman with clear, clipped English and thin wispy white hair. I sit next to her and began my litany of complaint. I describe symptoms I blanch to write here, summoning all my courage to speak directly and without euphemisms.

“I moved to China almost six months ago, “ I begin, “and almost since the beginning of that time, I have been ill. I have had diarrhea every day. Sometimes it is very severe and I am so sick I can hardly walk and can’t leave the house at all. Other times, it’s not that bad, and I can get around okay. But when it is very severe, I am extremely sick.”

I continue to describe the conditions of the illness in yet more graphic detail as the elderly woman gazes at me placidly and occasionally makes notes in Chinese.

“When you are very sick, how many times per day do you have diarrhea?”

“Ten, twelve – sometimes even more. Maybe fifteen times.”

“And when you are not that sick?”

“Once or twice, maybe three times.”

I continue to explain my condition, noting the times and conditions which prompt the illness. I want to mention the muscle spasms, but I hold back for fear of sounding melodramatic.

“Have you lost weight?”

“Yes, I have lost a lot of weight. Ten pounds, maybe fifteen.” Pausing, I say again, “Maybe five to seven kilos.”

“So your clothes are loose on you?”

“Yes, definitely. I can no longer wear almost anything I brought here from the States. My pants especially are so big they fall off, even with a belt.”

With the flourish of a triumphant prosecuting attorney brandishing exhibit A, she reaches out and tugs on the snug waistband of my jeans. “But these pants fit fine!”

“Yes, these do, I just bought these. But my old clothes don’t fit at all. I can’t wear them.” I know I sound like I am whining.

The doctor asks me to lie on the examining table. She pokes around my abdomen, and I report that I feel no pain after each little jab.

“Where you sick today?”

“A little, not that bad.”

“Did you have diarrhea?”

“Once.”

“And yesterday?”

“Two or three times. But last weekend I was extremely sick…” I begin.

“But now you are okay.”

“No, I am still sick. I am still having diarrhea.”

“Just once, though, today.”

I am beginning to realize this woman is not on my side.

The doctor regards me gravely. “The problem is, you eat too much. If you eat too much, you will have diarrhea.”

I suddenly feel as though I have wandered into the psychiatric ward by mistake.

“But no – I mean, I eat almost nothing. I have lost more than ten pounds.”

“You need to not eat so much. Are you under stress at work?”

“I guess - yes, a little.”

“Stress also causes diarrhea. Try not to have too much stress, and do not eat too much. Probably you eat too much.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I do neither. Instead, I deferentially nod my head, gather my belongings, and follow the doctor to the front desk. As I prepare to pay, she touches my arm lightly. Looking down, I notice for the first time that I am nearly a foot taller than she.

“Do you drink milk here?’

“Yes.”

“The milk in China is not like the milk in your country. There is no lactose. It will make you sick. You should not drink milk here.”

I feel my voice breaking as I manage a meek “okay.”

I ask her if she would evaluate a medical sample, and she grudgingly agrees, provided I gather the sample at home and bring it in before ten o’clock in the morning. I ask if they have containers for the purpose, and she says they do not. I can bring a sample back tomorrow, maybe, in my own container.

The rain is still falling when I leave the last hospital. The shopkeepers and street vendors have all rolled down their awnings or set up large green beach umbrellas. Two orderlies push a stretcher across the pockmarked parking lot, the patient completely covered with a blue tarp. I wonder if the patient is dead, or if they are just moving him that way because it is raining. A nurse walks up and down the covered walkway, guiding a young boy whose head is wrapped in bandages. The boy shuffles slowly along, pausing now and again to breathe in great, ragged gasps.

BCD

"Bad China Day" is a common expression here for a day when you're really fed up with living in China.

Dev and I are working on a Bad China Week.

On Tuesday, I got a call from a man speaking rapid and angry Chinese. Apparently while Ayi was out walking Shackleton, the dog nipped this man's pants' leg. The man was uninjured, but his pants were torn. I asked Apple to tell him I apologized and of course, I offered to pay for a new pair of pants.

He insisted on going to the doctor and threatened to call the police.

I told him, fine, go to the doctor and I will pay for your appointment (not realizing, at this stage, that the dog never even contacted his leg and he was totally uninjured). This negotiation stretched over five or six phone calls.

I was otherwise detained at an interminable banquet luncheon in a smoke-filled hall, gallantly ignoring the roaches running up the wall behind me so as not to embarass our hosts, who meanwhile regaled me with "10 Reasons You'll Never Really Understand Chinese Cooking" - a speech so often recited, it must be required memorization in grade school.

The man didn't believe me when I said I would reimburse him for the doctor and asked me to accompany him to the hospital. I offered to have Ayi escort him instead. Many more phone calls ensued. At last, it was arranged, Ayi took the man to the hospital and we agreed to meet him in the evening to discuss his pants.

I headed off to my hair appointment, got totally lost in a maze of trash-filled alleyways in the blazing heat, and a gang of loafers threw a cigarette butt at me for being laowai.

Well, as you should have guessed by now - though I naively did not - this man figured he hit the jackpot the moment a foreigner's dog bit him, and now he was trying to shake us down. His leg, and I must stress this again, was completely unblemished, though he did brandish his torn pants. He demanded 3000 yuan ($375) for his pants, taxis, missed days at work, and the four follow-up visits he claimed he had to make to the hospital. (For perspective, my consultation and two asthma prescriptions cost about 100 yuan.)

Eventually we settled with him for an undisclosed amount on the condition he sign a document ensuring we are not liable for any further complications or consquences from this non-existent injury.

The evening was capped by my first attack of stomach illness, the result of accidentally drinking tap water at the afore-mentioned banquet.

And then, this morning I was invited to a party in San Francisco with the editors of Salon (!), but instead I think I'll just go back to my job, eight hours a day trying to think up synonyms for "spicy."

this way madness lies

I'm sitting in my very warm office this Monday morning, while outside hundreds, thousands of cicadas are constantly screaming in the trees, this high, reverberating wail that seems to swell without ever breaking, until they die and fall to the sidewalk and their bodies rot on the ground, so large they look like dead birds.

My Horrible Mosquito Problem

I couldn't possibly discuss my time in the city without mentioning my constant terrible battle with mosquitos.

The weather this time of year is hot and humid - today was typical at 85 degrees with 70% humidity, and often there are thunderstorms in the afternoons. This leads to pools of warm, dirty water, breeding grounds for mosquitos. I haven't spent much time around mosquitos before - they are rare in most places I have lived - so I never knew before that I am extremely sensitive to mosquito bites and likewise extremely attractive to mosquitos.

It is not uncommon for me to fall asleep for a short nap and wake with two or three new bites. After work, I may have four or five. At any one time, I have about 10-15 "active" bites, and my feet, legs, and arms are covered in scabs, scars, and red welts about the size of a dime.

Dev, of course, has no bites at all.

Needless to say, I've tried everything. First, I used an organic repellent spray, then buckled down and got the lethal chemical type. I have anti-itch cream; I soak my legs in cool water every evening. There's a group of mosquitos under my desk at work, so our office ayi starting burning citronella coils under the desk - but these for-outside-use-only coils just left us with nosebleeds and headaches from the fumes.

I usually wake up around 4 am, overcome with itching, and sleep only intermittently after that. Last night was perhaps the worst - I woke up at 5am and began coating my legs with anti-itch cream as usual. When it didn't work, I went into the bathroom, soaked a bath towel in cool water, and returned to bed to wrap it around my legs. That accomplished nothing but soaking the bedsheets. I finally resigned myself to lying still for about an hour, rubbing one leg with the opposite foot, until I fell back to sleep.

[This is compounded by the coughing, sneezing, and burning throat and eyes caused by the city's severe air pollution (Shanghai is one of the world's five worst cities for air quality, Beijing is generally cited as the first - the number of micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter of air is four times higher in Shanghai than in Los Angeles and New York combined). The end result is that I often sleep as little as four or five solid hours a night before waking from a combination of coughing and itching.]

The itching, at least, may soon improve.

Today at work, our office ayi was cleaning under my desk when she noticed my legs, red and raw and wrapped in wet paper towels. She asked me what was wrong and I answered "mosquitos" - one of the Chinese words I practice here most often. She returned with a little bottle of bright green, astringent liquid with a strong herbal smell and applied it to my bites. The liquid has a cool, menthol-type feeling and totally numbs the itching. Unfortunately, the effects wear off in about an hour, but it's still a major improvement over the useless creams I had before. I bought my own bottle this evening, 12 ounces for $1.20.

Without a Car

So I went to drop off my car at the dealership this morning because the odometer and speedometer stopped working suddenly. I needed the car to meet Lilli for lunch and later for an appointment at 5:30pm, so I specifically requested that they diagnose the problem only, and only if they could complete that in two hours. I planned on walking to the mall nearby and reading at Starbucks until I could come retrieve the car. Predictably, everything went terribly awry, the car won't be ready all day, I had to cancel my appointments, and then walk a few miles back home down an inhospitable street in high heels.

Usually an even-tempered person, I was almost paralyzed with fury. Not my typical "ranting" style of rage, which is really only a self-conscious spoof of high-minded fury, all bluster and show, but a real, dense, brooding rage which doesn't lend itself nearly as well to zany antics and clever phrasing. I have rarely been so angry.

After more than twenty relocations, I could have said honestly that I had never lived in or even visited a city I didn't like. In fact, I often used to boast of such as proud proof of my adaptability and good humor.

I hate San Jose. I hate San Jose like poison*.

My hatred for San Jose is as irrational as it is passionate. However, being a generally rational person, I've tried for several months to articulate what exactly bothers me so much about living here. I used to think that railing against the suburbs was just knee-jerk hipster condescension or petulant teenage angst. Now that I find myself pouting like I have a frequent buyer card at Hot Topic, I'm trying to think seriously, without falling back on the now-cliched critiques of suburbia that began with Babbitt or earlier and continue with The Stepford Wives, "American Beauty," "Edward Scissorhands," ad nauseum - the suburbs as sterile, repressed, populated by brittle housewives and tract houses simmering with dire family secrets. Then there are the familiar environmental complaints: rampant development, sprawl, pollution. And sociological critiques as thin veils for snobbery: no art, no culture, all tasteless McMansions and ignorant consumers.

While I certainly deplore sprawl and pollution, and I'm sorry to say I'm not above the occasional unkind snicker at the middle American comforts of the local Applebees, my own dislike is much more personal and immediate. I feel trapped here. There are no buses, no taxis, no trains, nowhere to walk, nowhere to go. Everything looks the same in every direction, a disorientating nightmare. In San Francisco, Chicago, or Paris, I could walk outside and embark on any number of adventures by any number of means. San Jose is the opposite of possibility.

I often go on at length about how much I love my car. It's a lovely car, sleek and comfortable and fun to drive. And it was, essentially, a present from Dev, and a rather grandiose one at that. But more than that, it is an escape hatch, an ejection seat. As long as I have my car gassed up and ready outside, I can get out of here at any time and head to San Francisco, or even to Los Angeles. Without it, I'm stuck wandering these endless undifferentiated stretches of big box stores and office parks like an animal pacing its cage.

I remember when I was very little and just learning to dress myself. Occasionally I would pull on a large sweater, usually a turtleneck, and get sort of temporarily stuck in it. Arms in the wrong hole, all twisted around, wool damp from my breath, stifled. And I'd begin to flail around in a pitch of anger and panic, and make the problem that much worse, until finally my mother would see me looking ridiculous, with a sweater on my head, and pull the garment down with a sudden pop and back to light and fresh air and sunshine. Without my car, I'm just stuck standing here with a sweater on my head, getting madder and madder.

* Lucas, on San Jose: "Well, I wouldn't call it suburban exactly. It has a miasma of despair that is very urban."

Radio Shack and Human Dignity

I've spent the last several days churning out question after question on Renaissance history, punctuated by the occasional demeaning trip to Radio Shack.

You see, on Friday I purchased a new cell phone and an accompanying new cell phone plan. It turned out the phone was not what I needed, and I returned on Sunday to exchange that phone for another, while keeping the same plan.

I spent seven hours on Sunday trying to straighten out the ensuing mess, including visits to two different Sprint stores and two different Radio Shacks.

The endless miseries do not bear retelling, but suffice it to say, at one point I entered a Sprint store to be told that I needed to call customer service for assistance. I was forced to use a display phone, still affixed to its display with a cord that a single moment's inattention would snap back out of your hands. I stood there quite literally tethered in place for 60 minutes.

At the end of the day, I had spent about $600 in fees and deposits and had no working phones at all.

On the plus side, I picked up a $5 "body fat analyzer" at Radio Shack as an impulse buy, so now I have something else to feel bad about - for only five dollars!

Public Art

Incidentally, I just recently noticed the sculptural nightmares that now lurk under the overpass (under the overpass) in Emeryville. They are a group of two-dimensional metal figures representing a diverse assortment of Emeryvillians, young and old. Leering, wretched, skeletal, they cast shadows against the concrete walls like the stuff of your most terrible dreams. And naturally they are placed on either side of a stop light, allowing you to pass terrible minutes alone with these damned wraiths.

I think the problem stems from the belief that any art is better than no art. This is simply not so. I'd rather watch an action painting of graffiti and splattered blood zip past my car window than some community college student's final project.

(I might add that contemporary urban murals are a particular blight on the landscape: crayola-bright colors applied with a hand that attempts to convey bland messages of social enlightenment and political earnestness with the technical skill of a fat-fisted toddler and the conceptual subtlety of a Jefferson Airplane song.)