Getting Physical

About a week ago, I had to undergo a physical examination for my long-term visa application. The PRC has no reason to keep someone for a year who won't live that long, I suppose. So it was off to the foreign medical center for a workup.

The experience was a bit different than back home. The best way to describe the whole procedure is "assembly-line medicine." I didn't have one doctor, I had seven - each in a separate room with a very specific purpose. From the lobby, I am moved from room to room with a sheet of paper listing the various procedures. After each room, the doctor puts a stamp under one of the items and I'm on my way to the next.

(A quick aside: the Chinese bureaucracy loves stamping and sealing things. I couldn't begin to tell you the number of books and papers in my office with an official stamp of some sort on it. This is not new - the Chinese government has been using seals for hundreds of years. I've personally seen ancient documents which had been stamped so many times there wasn't any more room on the surface)

In themselves, the tests were not unusual. What was different was how thorough they were. Some of these procedures were things I've only had done when I was seriously ill. After the general height/weight notations, this was what they did:

-Blood pressure
-Eye exam (which was given a laboriously long name for some reason)
-Ultrasound
-Bloodwork (Didn't pass out or throw up, thank you very much)
-Electrocardiogram
-X-ray

If that weren't enough, this was not the full gamut; there were two tests they skipped. Given the above, I sort of wonder what they were. (CAT scan maybe? Naw...)