My Time as a Human

“Get off at the Shipai stop and follow the old people,” my host told me with a grin. I quickly noted this in my calendar reminder, the one about my hospital visit for my knees, and promptly forgot where I’d placed this sage advice. That was a week ago. Today I spent an hour working out all of the details with my host when, just as we’d finished, my phone reminded me of how simple it could be.

The promised stream of octogenarians lead me directly from the MRT to the bus stop and the hospital. I trundled along with the heard, my precious MRI printouts rolled up in my tiny backpack. Those giant printouts had traveled all over Taiwan with me, over seas, through endless rain, to monasteries and back waiting for this day. At last I would have an answer for all of the people who had been asking constantly about the problem over the last few months. Surgery? Amputation? A hot bath? I had no idea, but the thought of not having to answer these questions or tell the story again was so uplifting I felt almost cured.

Going to a hospital in Taiwan isn’t like going to a hospital in the US. I kept waiting for the part where I was going to have to fight bored, angry or vicious people who were trying to screw me or, exhausted, just get me out of the way. I waited for a form to be wrong. I waited to find out I was in the wrong place on the opposite side of the hospital. I waited for someone to tell me what was full/closed/broken/on vacation so that I would have to come back another day in a month. And I kept waiting.

What I didn’t do was, in fact, wait. At no point did I sit still for more than five minutes. I quickly moved through the process and there were incredibly friendly, relaxed people helping me out at every turn. People laughed and worked out my paperwork despite the wrong language and the fact that I didn’t have a country insurance card. They worked with me to solve little problems. We moved quickly to reasonable solutions. Stamps thumped and papers folded. Someone had already arrived to personally escort me to the room in the next building.

I was certain that I must have been mistaken for a visiting German relative of the hospital overlord or, at the very least, I was getting the nose discount. I asked several people I met outside the hospital later and all of them told me the same story: nope. That’s how it works here. And I saw this happen with some of the old people I’d followed to the hospital. They were treated with respect and smiles and, while I still don’t have enough of the language down to be sure, I didn’t see any lengthy painful discussions about insurance or the like. Mostly people flashed cards, exchanged smiles and were shown where to go.

The other thing that happened over and over was the response to my doctor’s name. I got it when calling other doctors from China. I got it on the phone to the hospital. Once I reached the hospital itself in the midst of some confusion I waved a notebook with the Chinese characters for his name and people’s faces changed into an, “ah yes of course” look and they would tell me, “很有名”. He is very famous.

As always the moment itself, after all these months, went very quickly. I had prepared a list of questions and hopped in with my moleskin crushed in my fist, ready for action. First a doctor in training looked over my MRI, checked my knee, and asked me a few questions I’d gone through many times over the past few months. A few minutes later the actual Orthopedics doc arrived and tested him. I started telling my story and already he said, “ah” and looked to his apprentice to see if he’d gotten it yet. He looked over the MRI. He then twisted, yanked, and poked my knee in all directions, finally poking me in a way no one else yet had to hit the sweet spot. “Ow!” Zap! That was it.

I’m happy with the result, despite the downside. I’ll continue to be in pain for quite a while, but there is no need for surgery. Just resting and healing. Yet another lesson in patience, as I’ve already tried that for nearly four months, but he told me it could easily be six. In the end, I think the peace of mind and all of the additional advice about various forms of exercise and care, all from the famous english-speaking hospital director of orthopedics, were well worth the $13 it cost me.

Bonus Round

I was prescribed a much simpler knee brace and as I wandered the streets checking the traditional characters written on a scrap of paper against one sign after another, a random kid in a bright red baseball hat grabbed me and lead me to the place. Inside two women worked through my Chinese to find just what I needed. Thanks Taiwan. Don’t worry mom, they’ve got me covered.

No Way

Ha ha ha! In the “no way” department I found this great write up of a similar amazing medical experience by an American in Taiwan. Check out her last line.

Losing a hand always sounded to me like the perfect opportunity to learn to play trumpet. No matter which hand you lose, the other one can easily manipulate the three valves. The physical act of blasting lungs full of air through the thing also sounds like great therapy. Kind of like a more socially acceptable form of screaming. Earlier this week my friend found out that she may forever have limited use of her hand and arm and, worse, constant pain. Suddenly my many musings over the years became pertinent.

I’ve tended to think in terms of creative outlets first when I’ve thought about what I would do if I became disabled in some way. Blindness always seemed like a good time to really become a guitar master. Deafness would be about photography and illustration. Losing limbs would mean picking other instruments, or focusing on singing. I looked up Curtis Mayfield a while back on a whim, wondering what had happened to him. It turns out that he had been hit by a falling stage light and paralyzed. He continued to write music by singing into a microphone.

The thing that I neglected to consider is the link between mind and body. Imagining myself happily trumpeting away ignored the massive psychological impact of having no arm. My body feeds my mental state, and even what I think about, in a whole variety of ways from adrenaline to raging hormones.

Certainly hormones and adrenaline are more immediate and obvious, but pumping bad food into my system makes me weaker and mentally dull. Injury, though, has a unique effect in that it can be both physically painful and have psychological implications. When I broke my foot I became weak, incapable, shy, and fearful of the world.

Recently I met with a woman to discuss a documentary project about, well, her. She discovered that she had arthritis when she was in her early twenties. It slowly worked through her system until she had to have both hips and both knees replaced. Because it is abnormal to get this form of arthritis until people get older, her insurance company refused to pay for it.

All of her energy was spent learning how to walk again. She had to start all over again from scratch doing something she didn’t remember learning. Compress butt muscle. Twitch calf. Each muscle was a piece of the whole movement and each required individual attention and complete focus. She was psychologically drained and went into reclusion and depression.

After years of work, she has returned to the world and wants to push it as far as it can go. She still has a difficult time walking, but that isn’t enough. She wants to learn to dance.

In effect, her very real experience directly contradicted everything I had thought I might do. Instead of finding new activities that fit within the new scope of her limits of movement, she is pushing singlemindedly to the most difficult task she can find. I asked her if it was a quest for normalcy or the desire for a higher mountain to climb and she wasn’t sure. I’m sure it’s hard to know.