What's Lurking Behind that Door?

Does this look like an operating table you'd find on ER?!

October 29, 1999
Web posted at: 3:54 p.m. EDT (1954 GMT)

By David McLain

The only good thing I can say about getting kicked by a camel is that a trip to the emergency room costs less than $5, including X-rays.

A week later, my leg was still not feeling better and I was getting worried. A physical therapist friend sent me an email saying I might have broken fibula (lower-leg bone). It was definitely time to seek medical advice. Kyle, our interpreter, and I walked out into the smoky streets of Turpan to try and find a cab to take us to the hospital. A guy appeared out of the darkness and said "donkey taxi?" I looked at his rickety cart, he looked at his donkey, I looked back at Kyle and said "no freaking way."

Walking into a Chinese hospital is like walking into a bad Greyhound bus stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The only difference is that the bus stop is cleaner. The first thing I saw when I walked into the hospital's lobby was somebody's half-eaten lunch next to a bottle of intravenous medication with the tubes still coming out of it. I could only wonder what would come next.

This sink is where doctors and nurses wash up before examining patients!

Next, a guy in a dirty room wrote me a prescription for an X-ray. A "nurse" appeared and led us down a pitch-black stairway into the basement. It was the kind of stairwell that makes you want to look over your shoulder on your way back up to make sure nothing is about to grab you. At the bottom of the stairwell was a chained gate with a padlock on it. I kept thinking, there is no way anything alive is down here. She banged, yanked on it, and yelled something in Chinese. When no one appeared we walked back up and went into a room where a Chinese doctor was seeing a patient. I kept staring at bouquets of plastic flowers stuck in bottles, which once contained intravenous medication.

Eventually, the X-ray man appeared in a grimy suit with the label still attached to the sleeve. He procured a key from the suit pocket, led us back into the basement and unlocked the chain link fence.

Before I go further with the story, I have to be honest. I was scared.

When you're injured in a foreign country you never really know what's going on. The predictability of American hospitals is reassuring to the injured. It's clean, it's orderly, and a cocky arrogant authority figure in a crisp white jacket is around every corner. I wanted that short bald guy from ER to appear. When it comes to broken bones, he's exactly what I want. I guess we're spoiled in the States. Excellent medical care is around every corner and you take it for granted until it's not there.

Frankenstein is the only word you need to begin imagining the X-ray room at the public hospital. A single bulb hanging from a wire illuminated puke green walls layered with grime. Big heavy old-fashioned wires snaked their way out of an X-ray machine across the cold cement floor. They led to a control room overlooking this scene through a single six-inch-thick bulletproof piece of glass.

For some reason, I remember an old sandbag lying in the corner. The guy put me up on the table, drew a creepy X on my leg and disappeared into the control room. Weird noises came out, a low-pitched hum filled the air, and it was done. I felt no pain.

Fifteen minutes later, the man appeared with a dripping wet X-ray. He held it up to a light, looked at it for ten seconds, and said I was fine. He handed me the wet X-ray and I was off.

The next day, I went back to the hospital and received a little spray bottle of medication to put on my leg. The instruction label read: "dispelling wind - evil and wetness - evil, removing blood stains and invigorating vital energy, eliminating swelling and relieving pain, dredging the medirian passage, and to be used in the treatment of local anesthesia of reduction for fracture and dislocation of joint." I copied here exactly as it appears on the bottle, spelling errors and all.