Warning! The Contents of this Post Are Not For the Faint of Heart

If you are coming to China to live, you are required by the Chinese government to complete a medical exam. So, after one day to recover from the Vancouver/Hong Kong flight I am picked up by Christie, an Immigration Administrator, and her driver to complete this task.  Christie’s job is to assist me in fulfilling the requirements for a Residence Visa. She is about thirty years old and very efficient at her job. First up, she says, are pictures that need to be taken for various files.  The driver drops us off very close to the photography studio and we jump out of the van before other vehicles start honking at us. Traffic here is best described as aggressive. Lines on the roads are merely suggestions, turn signals are rarely used and scooters are everywhere…but more on that in another post.

Having my picture taken is not my forte and they never turn out well in my mind. The ones taken this morning are no exception and with the jet lag factored in, I look especially pale and haggard. Plus they always make me take off my glasses which doesn’t help my case either because I can’t see what’s going on and I always have a weird expression on my face.  But no matter, they are done and we proceeded to the clinic where the worst is yet to come.

With Christie’s help I filled out the appropriate forms and the woman behind the desk entered my information into her computer with Christie translating. The newly taken photograph is attached to my forms. I take my forms and I am sent down a hallway where first up is the abdominal ultrasound.  My husband had failed to mention this part of the medical to me until that morning so I was ill prepared and quite apprehensive about this.  The technician did nothing to help ease my feelings of anxiety.  She just issued curt instructions about what to do and we were done in record time. Then with military like precision I was sent from room to room for an EKG, an eye exam, a blood pressure test (which was a little high given the circumstances) listening to my heart and a chest X-ray.

Then came the ‘fun’ surprise.

Now a urine sample is no surprise in a medical examination but it is a surprise when they hand you what looks like a quarter cup measuring cup – you know the ones with the handle. An even bigger surprise is walking into the woman’s washroom and you are confronted with a squat toilet. Another name for them is a ‘squatty potty’ which I find rather endearing. Maybe it’s because I taught K/Grade 1 for a lot of years and we rhymed a lot. If you are not familiar with these ‘squatty potties’ click here to be enlightened.

My sister, Darlene, can tell you that I am not very good at this squatting thing. There is a certain incident along HWY 36 on a trip to Lethbridge when we were kids that only she and I know about, that attests to this fact. This incident is what I thought of when I was getting down to business and given the fact that I was jet lagged and a bit stressed, I started to laugh. I was very glad my sister was not with me, as invariably when we start to laugh about something, we laugh so hard we cry. I did, however, manage to pull myself together to finish the job.  When you are finished, you put your little measuring cup, that has no lid, on a big silver tray alongside other little measuring cups, that also have no lids and walk away shaking your head in disbelief.  I must say that my sample looked pretty good compared to the other ones sitting there.

Last up was the taking of blood samples where you stick your arm through a hole in a window and the technician takes your blood. Did you know your veins get bigger when they slap them?  I get my results on Friday.