in which danielle gets a health exam.

at 9:30 on the dot this morning, i was picked up by my lovely lao ban, auntie lin, and we proceeded off to the Zhejiang Travel Healthcare Centre for my "healthy test". after forking over about 80 bucks and filling out some forms i was all set to dive headfirst into a myriad of tests. blood was first, went smoothly, and then i hit my first roadblock - the dreaded urine sample.

they handed me the little plastic cup, i went to the bathroom, mei you xiaobian. no pee. wait, okay, a little bit. i went back out and showed them. not enough, stupid waiguo ren, throw it out and try again! it was hard enough forcing it the first time but bravely i threw out my first cup and got a second one. naturally this somehow fell out of my hand and into the toilet. i came out, explained with halting chinese and mime as to what had happened. the staff were not impressed. out came the third cup. back to the bathroom i went, praying that somehow i would magically need to pee. as was expected nothing happened. auntie lin was getting a bit impatient by this time and decided to force 4 cups of water into me before lugging me off to the next tests, which would give me ample time to want to empty my bladder.

the next test was a weight, height, and eye exam. the good news is i apparently lost 5 lbs since i came to china despite copious amounts of booze and subway; i am now at roughly 145 lbs!!! incredible!!!!! thank you china (although i have a feeling this has something to do with my bout of food poisoning this past weekend)!!!!!! eyes weren't too hot even though i was wearing contacts but mei wenti. test 3 was an ultrasound. the woman grunted at me, pointed to a bed, i complied and lay down. she rucked my shirt up and unceremoniously dumped really cold liquid on my stomach then schlepped the device down. roughly five seconds later she threw a kleenex on my tummy and grunted again. i took this as a positive sign, cleaned up and went on my merry way to blood pressure lady.

blood pressure lady had no patience for my lack of chinese and got really angry when i had no idea what her purpose was or what i was supposed to do. i got yelled at in putonghua for a good minute until auntie lin gently gestured to the blood pressure machine (i'd had no idea that was the test i was getting) and all was suddenly well. blood pressure seemed good, now off to a heart test. once again my clothes were shoved up and weird liquid was dumped on me along with clampy things placed at various spots on my chest, stomach, and ANKLE. the concensus??? i drink too much alcohol so my heart is too fast! i'm sure that has nothing to do with being SCARED and FREEZING as i was half naked in a hospital WITHOUT HEAT and sporting OPEN WINDOWS. on a rainy +11 day. come on. auntie lin admonished me against the dangers of pi jiu as we proceeded to the x-ray. this was the most normal test of all of them and therefore not worthy of a paragraph.

at last it was time to return to the urine test, so i retrieved cup #4 and marched off to my stall. even after four cups of water, pressure to perform had somehow paralyzed me and i could only produce meager amounts of urine. it was just barely enough to satisfy the surly urine nurses but they stamped the forms and finally, finally, i was allowed to leave health check hell.

two hours later i'm now cold and starving but boy do i ever have to pee!!!